Giving Compass' Take:

• Hallie Busta reports that the University of Michigan targeted high-achieving, low-income students with information about financial aid to boost their enrollment. 

• How can states better inform students about financial aid they are already eligible for? What support do low-income students need to make it to and through college? 

• Learn about the social capital gap impacting low-income students. 

Highly selective colleges struggling to recruit more low-income students could benefit from a simple approach: encouragement to apply paired with information about aid. That's according to a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research looking at the effects of a low-cost mailing campaign by the University of Michigan that targeted 1,932 high-achieving, low-income prospective students in the state.

In September of their senior year, those students received a mailing promising four years of free tuition and fees — aid for which they were already qualified. It also told them they would succeed at the college and that they didn't have to complete financial aid forms to get the scholarship. Parents and high school principals were also made aware of the opportunity.

Those students were more than twice as likely to apply (67%), be admitted (32%) and enroll (27%) than students in the control group. About a quarter of the boost in enrollment came from students who would not have attended college otherwise.

Read the full article about recruiting low-income students by Hallie Busta at Education Dive.