As the cost of higher education rises, opportunities for low-income students are diminishing. That puts more pressure on an organization like A Better Chance, a national nonprofit group, founded in 1964, that sends low-income students of color to college preparatory schools.

And A Better Chance is responding to the challenge. Ensuring equal opportunities in education was the main topic of conversation at its annual luncheon yesterday.

“Education is one of the very few powerful levers left in our society that can create equal opportunity for everyone,” the president of Princeton University, Shirley Tilghman, said in her acceptance speech for the Benjamin E. Mays Award.

“We see that academic excellence is tied to income. This is the great challenge for universities like Princeton,” she said. “That’s why A Better Chance is so important for this country as a whole: It’s closing that cavernous gap.”

A Better Chance is indeed working to close the gap further.

“We’re launching a growth initiative to dramatically increase the number of students,” the group’s president, Sandra Timmons, said.

More than 1,600 A Better Chance students are currently enrolled at 250 college preparatory schools in 27 states.

“The goal is to grow a minimum of 10% in Oakland, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, as well as through a new partnership in Houston and Dallas,” Ms. Timmons said.

An ambitious plan under way in New York City has increased the number of students to 25 this year from six two years ago. The goal is to have 75 to 80 children enrolled in two years, by expanding the number of students in the 20 participating schools and reaching out to 40 day schools that aren’t currently participating.

The organization is also starting to cultivate its 11,000 alumni, many of whom have achieved success in business and politics. Last year it published its first alumni directory, and it is also launching an online mentoring system.

“We kind of call it the New Kids Network,” the chairman (and an alumnus) of A Better Chance, Bernard Beal, said. Mr. Beal is the founder one of the few minority-owned banks on Wall Street.

Business and government leaders at the luncheon applauded the initiatives.

“I need more talented people of color in my organization,” the chairman of Young & Rubicam Brands, Ann Fudge, said. She, too, was honored.

The third leader honored, the state’s superintendent of banks, Diana Taylor, spoke of the responsibility of business and government.

“A Better Chance is just as relevant now as it was in the 1960s,” Ms. Taylor said. “But business and government must back it up. We, too, can provide a better chance.”

The organization knows the supply of students is there. Each year, A Better Chance receives up to 4,000 applications. A labor-intensive selection process chooses 800 students to apply to schools. This year, 450 were placed.

To win more openings, the organization is reaching out to new schools. Elite independent schools have small enrollments, so one new source has been public schools in affluent communities such as Westport, Darien, and Westport.

Mr. Beal said the organization could handle 600 scholars a year with “some tweaking” to its current operations and 750 if “significant modifications” were made. The number would probably not go above 900, he said.

It comes down to money. The organization has an annual budget of $3 million and an impressive $11.8 million endowment – a gift from Oprah Winfrey in 1999.

Of course, it’s not as simple as carting off inner-city kids to affluent schools and communities, as the students attending the luncheon explained.

“It’s a blessing to have the opportunity, but you also have the extra burden of not belonging,” a rising senior at Rye Country Day School, Joshua Bennett of Yonkers, said.

“There are all these obstacles and stereotypes, especially about minorities. You have to break the stereotypes, and that can make you feel isolated,” a teenager from White Plains, George Hayward, said. He is in the Class of 2007 at Phillips Exeter Academy, where he is studying Latin and writing for the Exonian, the school newspaper.

A graduate of the Marin Academy, Ashley McCullough, spoke of the positives of the exposure. “You’re with people who are wealthy,” she said. “You realize the things they do, and you can take that back to the community.”

The affiliation with A Better Chance opens lots of doors, starting in the classroom. “Going to an independent high school has given me a better education,” Ms. McCullough said.

A Better Chance also helped her in the college admissions process.

“When I was a junior, I got dozens of letters from colleges just because I was in A Better Chance,” she said. “

It happens in the professional world, too. People seem eager to give us their business cards,” Ms. McCullough said.

For a rising senior at Miss Porter’s School, Udodi Okoh, A Better Chance has provided a network “of people who believe in you.” She’s already set a career objective. “I want to become a corporate lawyer or an investment banker,” her resume reads.

Ms. McCullough – who found A Better Chance through Canaan Place, a foster home in Berkeley, Calif. – aspires to reform the foster care system. She’ll start learning how as a public-policy major at Stanford University, where she matriculates in the fall.

More than 96% of A Better Chance students enroll in college directly after high school.

A Bronx native, Denise Bailey-Castro, will be a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania this fall, having graduated from the Chapin School, where she took six Advanced Placement classes.

“My tuition is $45,000. It’s pretty scary,” she said. “This education is not available to everyone.” But she and the other students have faith in the American dream.

“You can achieve if you persevere and work hard,” the aspiring math major, who plans to go into business, said. “It’s about hard work and a little luck,” Exeter’s Mr. Hayward said.