...Improving the path to college for low-income students is such a priority among policymakers that a high-level conference on the matter was held Wednesday at the National Press Club featuring Hoxby, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard University.

Similar work has gotten under way through a project called College Match in eight low-income schools in Chicago, after research at the University of Chicago found that only 59 percent of high school seniors who said they aspired to go to college ever actually applied. Among the students who were qualified for admission to very selective colleges, only 38 percent enrolled in one.

The project, administered by the nonprofit organization MDRC, a social policy group previously called the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp., assigns advisers to work with the highest-achieving students and has so far increased the likelihood they’ll apply to college.

This more labor-intensive approach costs $725, MDRC says.

“We really believe that information strategies are good for students who only need information, but there are students out there who need a little bit more,” said D. Crystal Byndloss, a senior research associate at MDRC. “Ours is more of the heavy touch, more intensive intervention.”

The idea will be expanded to New York City this fall...