US Edition Fewer than one per cent of all those admitted to Oxbridge between 2005 and 2007 qualified for free school meals, according to the Sutton Trust, a charity campaigning to improve levels of social mobility.
The charity said that only 130 of the most deprived pupils won a place at Oxford or Cambridge during those three years, of a total 16,110 students.
By comparison, almost half of the intake came from independent schools.
The report also found that private school pupils are more than 22 times more likely to enter one of the country’s top 25 universities than those entitled to free school meals and six times more likely than other state school pupils.
The Sutton Trust said that the stark differences in participation were driven by significant gaps in attainment at GCSE level and earlier.
Pupils at fee-paying schools are three-and-a-half times more likely to attain five GCSE with grades A*-C than the pupils from the poorest homes, it said.
Only two per cent of those who won places at England’s 25 most academically selective universities were free school meal pupils, compared with 72.2 per cent of other state school pupils and just over a quarter from independent schools.
The Government has scrapped the Aimhigher scheme, which was aimed at getting more children from less-advantaged backgrounds into university.
Sir Peter Lampl, Chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: “The prospects for less privileged students getting into top universities will get more difficult with the almost tripling of tuition fees, and the ending of the Aimhigher scheme.
“Together these reforms amount to a completely new and uncertain landscape for university access for less privileged students.”
He said the Government’s new £150 million-a-year National Scholarship programme should be used to fund outreach work as well as providing tuition fee relief.
The Trust called for the Office for Fair Access (Offa), a regulator set up by Labour to improve access to higher education, to remain independent and to include figures from outside the higher education sector.
Nick Gibb, the schools minister said: "Sutton Trust's report is yet more evidence confirming the widening attainment gap in our education system between those from poor and wealthiest backgrounds and between the independent and state sectors.
“It is a key priority of the coalition Government to narrow and ultimately close that gap, which is why we are taking such radical measures to raise standards in the state education system.
“We are focusing on raising standards of behaviour in our schools, improving reading in the final years of primary school, reviewing the National Curriculum so it is on a par to the best education jurisdictions in the world and it is why we are introducing a pupil premium targeted at the children from the poorest backgrounds.”
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said: “The government can say we’re all in it together as often as it likes, but the public are not stupid.
“When you slash grants for the poorest children at college, abandon the Aimhigher programme that was focused on supporting poor people apply to university, cut university places and triple the cost of a degree you send a clear message that university is only for those able to afford it.”
Offa announced last month that elite institutions, including Oxford and Cambridge, will be ordered to increase the number of pupils they accept from state schools by around 300 a year.