Actually, though the graph is tricky to decipher, if you are in the bottom 70% of income or the top 1%, you have some advantage. Of course, the actual numbers a

Actually, though the graph is tricky to decipher, if you are in the bottom 70% of income or the top 1%, you have some advantage. Of course, the actual numbers are not shown, but there are clearly many more applicants in the bottom 70% than the top 1% (simply because the top 1% is a lot fewer people) so it is unclear how big the effect actually is. But colleges seem to slightly prefer accepting students coming from poorer families. (Or perhaps students coming from richer families send in more applications.)