Many (though not all) of the colleges in the American Talent Initiative are already need-blind and meet full demonstrated need or close to it for low-income students.
To me, I think the major issue with low-income students is not affordability at these types of schools but awareness and knowledge to navigate the application and financial aid processes. When I work with high-achieving, low-income students from whom college just got on their radar, most of them are expecting to enroll in the local public universities. Especially out here on the West Coast…a lot of these kids can’t imagine leaving their families and traveling 3,000 miles to travel to the Northeast to go to some elite private school.
My thoughts on things that’ll help are
-Partnerships with nonprofits, schools and organizations that are designed to help low-income students get into college. Posse and Questbridge are great; far too often kids haven’t heard of them, and may public school guidance counselors haven’t either (my GCs NEVER suggested either, and both existed in my city.) Hiring admissions officers whose job it is to form partnerships with some public schools, disseminate information to them, and understand the unique contexts of their students may be a good step in the right direction. There are also smaller local/regional and even smaller national programs that are working to get low-income students into college, and working with these programs can be useful too.
-Summer programs that are especially designed for low-income and/or underrepresented students. With scholarships. In every program I’ve volunteered with, we’ve had getting students into summer programs after sophomore and junior years of high school as a primary goal. Part of the problem is finding programs and the second half is funding these programs. As a nonprofit we can ask the universities to kick in part of the money on behalf of the kid and often do get it, but individual students don’t know they can do that.
Make a summer program that is, for example, half talented kids from underserved communities and half the kinds of talented kids who already get into these programs. Then offer the regular semi-college-level curriculum plus some extra courses - writing college admissions essays, navigating the financial aid process, selecting a college, etc. Towards the end of the summer, they can even have a deal where they have the kids submit part of the application super early so they’ve already started.