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Economic Diversity Among the Top 25 Ranked Schools

National Liberal Arts Colleges

Economic diversity has received growing attention in higher education, particularly at elite top-ranked schools that haven't traditionally enrolled large numbers of students from low-income families. This table shows the percentage of undergraduates receiving federal Pell Grants for low-income students at top-ranked schools in the 2016 Best Colleges rankings.

The proportion of students receiving Pell Grants, which are most often given to undergrads with family incomes of less than $20,000, isn't a perfect measure of an institution's efforts to achieve economic diversity: A college might enroll a large number of students just above the Pell cutoff, for instance, and percentages at public universities may reflect the wide variation from state to state in the number of qualified low-income students.

Still, many experts say that Pell figures are the best available gauge of how many low-income undergrads there are on a given campus. Pell Grant percentages were calculated using 2013-2014 school year data on the number of Pell Grant recipients at each school collected by the U.S. Department of Education and given to U.S. News, along with fall 2013 total undergraduate enrollment collected from the colleges themselves by U.S. News.

National Universities Liberal Arts Colleges Regional Universities Regional Colleges

U.S. News rank	School	Percent of undergraduates receiving Pell Grants
^#2 Overall Score: 96 out of 100.	Amherst College Amherst, MA	24%
^#19Tie Overall Score: 85 out of 100.	Grinnell College Grinnell, IA	24%
^#12Tie Overall Score: 88 out of 100.	Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY	24%
^#14Tie Overall Score: 86 out of 100.	Smith College Northampton, MA	23%
^#1 Overall Score: 100 out of 100.	Williams College Williamstown, MA	20%
^#25Tie Overall Score: 81 out of 100.	Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr, PA	19%
^#14Tie Overall Score: 86 out of 100.	Wesleyan University Middletown, CT	19%
^#23Tie Overall Score: 82 out of 100.	Macalester College St. Paul, MN	18%
^#4Tie Overall Score: 92 out of 100.	Pomona College Claremont, CA	18%
^#4Tie Overall Score: 92 out of 100.	Wellesley College Wellesley, MA	18%
^#4Tie Overall Score: 92 out of 100.	Bowdoin College Brunswick, ME	16%
^#12Tie Overall Score: 88 out of 100.	Haverford College Haverford, PA	16%
^#14Tie Overall Score: 86 out of 100.	Hamilton College Clinton, NY	15%
^#3 Overall Score: 94 out of 100.	Swarthmore College Swarthmore, PA	15%
^#14Tie Overall Score: 86 out of 100.	Harvey Mudd College Claremont, CA	14%
^#4Tie Overall Score: 92 out of 100.	Middlebury College Middlebury, VT	14%
^#8 Overall Score: 91 out of 100.	Carleton College Northfield, MN	13%
^#9Tie Overall Score: 89 out of 100.	Davidson College Davidson, NC	13%
^#25Tie Overall Score: 81 out of 100.	Bates College Lewiston, ME	12%
^#9Tie Overall Score: 89 out of 100.	Claremont McKenna College Claremont, CA	12%
^#19Tie Overall Score: 85 out of 100.	Colby College Waterville, ME	12%
^#19Tie Overall Score: 85 out of 100.	Colgate University Hamilton, NY	11%
^#23Tie Overall Score: 82 out of 100.	Oberlin College Oberlin, OH	11%
^#25Tie Overall Score: 81 out of 100.	Colorado College Colorado Springs, CO	10%
^#25Tie Overall Score: 81 out of 100.	Kenyon College Gambier, OH	10%