A study has found that sending information packets to bright low-income students raises the chance they apply to the more selective colleges:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/a-simple-way-to-send-poor-kids-to-top-colleges.html
A Simple Way to Send Poor Kids to Top Colleges
By DAVID LEONHARDT
New York Times
March 29, 2013

Quote
Among a control group of low-income students with SAT scores good enough to attend top colleges — but who did not receive the information packets — only 30 percent gained admission to a college matching their academic qualifications. Among a similar group of students who did receive a packet, 54 percent gained admission, according to the researchers, Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford and Sarah E. Turner of the University of Virginia.

David Coleman, the president of the College Board, told me that he considered the results powerful enough to require changes at his organization, which conducts the SAT. “We can’t stand by as students, particularly low-income students, go off track and don’t pursue the opportunities they have earned,” Mr. Coleman said. The group may soon begin sending its own version of the experiment’s information.
Why not send information by email to all students with good-enough scores, not just low-income students? Parental knowledge of college admissions is not perfectly correlated with income.