Elite colleges admit more low-income students than ever before, but admissions scandal reinforces stereotypes

Far from the California center of the college cheating scandal, Matt McGann has followed the news with more than casual concern.

McGann is dean of admission and financial aid at Amherst College, which has a $2 billion endowment and a 13 percent admission rate. The western Massachusetts campus, founded nearly 200 years ago, is the kind of rich, elite private college that the wealthy parents ensnared in the scandal sought for their children - and allegedly tried to get them into using huge payments, bribes and lies.

Amherst takes pride in its founding mission to serve "indigent young men," which has long since been widened to include all genders and has only grown stronger. Now nearly a third of its students are low-income, a percentage