At $43,360, the cost of one year at Amherst College is nearly five times Yasmin Navarro's family's annual income of $9,000.

But fortunately for Navarro, a freshman at the Massachusetts liberal arts college, Amherst is covering the full cost of tuition, room and board, and even books. In fact, all Navarro had to pay for was the plane ticket up north from her home in Houston, where she was raised in a single-parent family and attended an inner-city high school.

Navarro is just one of 46 freshmen who were matched with top colleges across the nation last year through QuestBridge, a three-year-old non-profit organization.

It connects low-income students with elite schools, and it is gaining ground in the Ivy League.

Columbia and Princeton universities are new partners this year, but as of yet, Penn has no plans to participate, according to Bill Schilling, director of financial aid.

As colleges push toward more diverse applicant pools, they are stepping up participation in programs like QuestBridge - a part of the larger Quest Ventures Program - and no-loan financial aid initiatives. These reflect a desire to show that top schools can be attainable options, even for students from poorer backgrounds.

QuestBridge works as an intermediary between applicants and its 15 partner schools, up from 10 last year and seven in the program's first year.

The program targets applicants through mailings and QuestLeadership, a summer mentorship program at Stanford University, according to QuestBridge Chief Executive Tim Brady.

Similar to the Common Application, one QuestBridge application can be used to apply to all of the program's partner schools.

Though some described the application as being grueling and far more work than the standard college application, most agreed that it forced them to start early and made them more prepared for the college-application process.

Once QuestBridge receives the applications, they are narrowed down and finalists are asked to submit a preference list of partner schools they would like to attend. Meanwhile, the partner schools also rank the applicants.

In December of their senior year of high school, students that are matched with schools they listed as preferences are notified and receive full scholarships.

For Micah Johnson, his full scholarship to Pomona College in California meant that he would be able to attend college without having to work a full-time job, which he said might have been a necessity if not for QuestBridge.

Those who aren't matched still have time to apply to colleges through the regular application process. Last year, 237 of them went on to be accepted to QuestBridge partner schools and received generous financial aid, according to Brady.

QuestBridge is funded through participating schools and private donors, Brady said. Though it can cost a school $20,000 to $40,000 to participate, Brady calls the price a "tremendous value . relative to the services we offer."

"All universities have difficulty finding stellar students," Brady said. There are plenty of qualified low-income students, and "it's a matter of making connections," he added.

Though Brady said he is satisfied that the current partner schools offer a good mix of programs and locations, expansion is always a goal. "The bottom line is we'd love to have Penn," Brady said.

Though Penn has not yet seriously considered becoming a QuestBridge partner school, President Amy Gutmann identified its mission of seeking out low-income students as parallel with Penn's goals, according to Schilling, head of financial aid.

Among low-income students, particularly those who would be the first in their families to attend college, "there just isn't the sense that places like Penn are places they'd go to college," Schilling said.

And that perception is exactly what programs like QuestBridge are looking to change.