This is just a random question. Do low income students have a higher or lower chance of getting into an elite college?
It depends on many factors, no simple answer.
Far lower. A typical elite private college has about half of undergraduates from the top 4% income/wealth families and only 10-20% from the bottom half income/wealth families.
Most of that is due to lack of opportunity to earn sufficient merit (of the type that elite private colleges like to see) or other non-academic barriers that keep them from applying or being able to attend. That most elite private colleges favor legacies is another factor that skews undergraduate students upward on the family income/wealth scale.
The exception is for schools that have the ability and goal of wanting a mix of backgrounds (including financial) where a low income applicant can be favored. But, yes, statistically there are fewer poor at elite colleges.
Ceteris paribus, you have higher odds of admission if you are either SES disadvantaged, which at Harvard roughly corresponds to below the median income, or if your family is rich enough to donate significant sums of money to the university. Your odds of admissions are lowest, if you fall into the middle to upper-middle class.
This is like saying elite football athletes have a far lower chance of being admitted than non-athletes because there are <50 football players admitted every year vs. well over 1,000 non-football players Elite athlete who apply actually have a much higher acceptance rate.
The meaningful question here is “ higher or lower chance” than what?
If you are asking if a random selection of students in an SES group will end up at an elite college, the chances are much lower. A much lower percentage of students in the lower SES groups apply to elite colleges, for many reasons.
If you’re asking about a group of students across SES groups with identical (which is impossible, but comparable) characteristics, I believe data has shown that students at both ends have higher acceptance rates.
Acceptance rates are higher and lower at the ends and lower in the middle. So lower income students have higher acceptance rates than “average” for a school, typically lower than the very top classification.
^^ Maybe. However, if you randomly place zygotes, their chances would decrease with wealth of where they are placed.