Many Ivy League schools have huge endowment funds to use to attract low-income students to apply to their school, but many qualifying high school students are not applying.

The New York Times reported the College Board, the group that administers the SATs, is beginning an outreach program for low-income high school students with high scores. They will be sending information packets on some of the nation's top schools to any low-income high school seniors who placed in the 15th percentile of the SAT or Preliminary SAT.

Along with the package that will be sent to roughly 28,000 seniors will be waivers for application fees to six colleges of the student's choice.

The College Board's new initiative is in response to research suggesting low-income high school students with high test scores are not giving the country's top schools a second look. While many prestigious and expensive schools have the most to offer in terms of financial aid, they tend to apply to cheaper local schools.

Judith Scott-Clayton, an economist at Columbia University is not involved in the outreach program, but she said the effort is one of the easiest issues in higher education to address.

"We spend so much time worrying about the kids who are not qualified - that's actually a pretty hard problem," Scott-Clayton said. Students from low-income homes who excel in high school and struggle in college are "an untapped resource," she said.

According to a recent survey from the Crimson, Harvard's student newspaper, 53 percent of the incoming freshman class comes from families making $125,000 per year and 29 percent come from families making $250,000 and up.

Recruiting students from low-income families brings about a conflicting issue for many prestigious school leaders. On one hand, it would heighten diversity and give bright young minds a chance they would not have gotten elsewhere. On the other, it would cause the school to use financial aid spending they have long been able to keep low.

"We are at the beginning of a sustained effort to move these numbers substantially," said David Coleman, the president of the College Board.

The information packets are based on an experiment conducted by economists from the University of Stanford and Virginia. They found that high-achieving, low-income high school seniors are more likely to apply to some of the nation's top schools when their application fee is waived.

54 percent of qualifying students who received a packet including a waiver of application fees were accepted to one of the country's 238 best schools. Only 30 percent of the same types of students were admitted when they did not receive such a packet.