As colleges boost their financial aid packages for the 2008-09 school year, they are scrambling to make elite education available to students of all economic backgrounds. Stanford is no exception: for the second year, the University is participating in the QuestBridge match program and has already accepted 16 participants for the class of 2012.

The QuestBridge application — which Stanford accepts in addition to the Common Application — is specially geared towards low-income students.

“Our mission is to change the demographic of decision making in the U.S., and now we are at the first step of that — the college admissions piece,” said QuestBridge CEO Tim Brady ‘90. “Elite colleges couldn’t find these [disadvantaged] students, so we came up with the college match process in 2004.”

After submitting applications to QuestBridge, some students are named finalists and have their applications forwarded to 20 partner colleges including schools like Yale and Princeton. Finalists rank QuestBridge’s partner colleges, and if one of their selections chooses to accept them, they are notified of the ‘match’ before the regular early action notification date.

“The application includes essay questions that help to bring out some of the really good characteristics that come out from a low-income childhood,” Brady said. “We get these students to talk about their situations.”

Of the 1,792 QuestBridge finalists this year, over 1,100 ranked Stanford.

Assistant Dean for Diversity Outreach DeAngela Burns-Wallace ‘96 said that Stanford does not grant these 1,100 applicants any special treatment because of their QuestBridge status.

“QuestBridge students are evaluated under the same criteria as all applications,” Burns-Wallace said.

Burns-Wallace claimed that students applying through the college match process are admitted at a rate similar to Stanford’s notoriously low 10 percent admissions rate.

“Kids still get admitted based on their own merit, so the rate is certainly not wildly different,” Brady explained. “But the fact that these are at-risk kids from severe backgrounds, the acceptance rate is a pretty big statement.”

While the number of QuestBridge applicants ‘matched’ with Stanford is small — there have been 25 matches to date — Burns-Wallace praised how the program has brought students to Stanford who normally would have shied away from applying.

“There are amazing students that are currently on our campus,” she said, “many of which would not have considered Stanford, for financial reasons, without learning more about our financial aid programs through QuestBridge.”

The QuestBridge program started on the Stanford campus 14 years ago as a five-week summer program for disadvantaged rising high school seniors. Today, QuestBridge has expanded its reach, and through the matching program, has helped 650 students gain admission to top schools since 2004.