In this letter, we propose a novel receive antenna selection algorithm based on cross entropy optimization to maximize the capacity over spatially correlated channels in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems. The performance of the proposed algorithm is investigated and compared with the existing schemes. Simulation results show that our low complexity algorithm can achieve near-optimal results that converge to within 99% of the optimal results obtained by exhaustive search. In addition, the proposed algorithm achieves near-optimal results irrespective of the mutual relationship between the number of transmit and receive antennas, the statistical properties of the channel and the operating signal-to-noise ratio.