Using IRS data, they calculated the distribution of family incomes for students enrolled in those colleges and found that the schools were admitting only a few students with truly low incomes. The bulk of Pell students had incomes that were just below the federal cutoff. This “distorted behavior,” as Hoxby put it, was made more glaring by the fact that the colleges admitted very few students whose incomes were just above the Pell cutoff.
