September 2018 - Form Your Future

Tytianna: Doing What I Had to Do for College

Posted on September 27, 2018November 8, 2018 by Barry Whitaker

“I like trying new things. I used to play basketball, but one day Mr. Freeman — he’s my coach and my school counselor — asked me if I’d ever thought about playing soccer,” Tytianna recalls.

“I went to tryouts and I liked it. Everybody says it’s a lot of running, but it’s not, because you have a team where everyone has a part to play. I’m a defender.”

Besides playing soccer, Tytianna also has a job. “I work at a fast food restaurant taking the food out to people’s cars. It’s a low wage, but the tips add up. Working with customers has taught me a lot of patience.”

“But I’m not planning on working in fast food all my life,” she says. “I want to go to college, get a degree and find a decent job. Working in fast food, I’m not going to get anywhere.”

Tytianna wasn’t sure where to start though. “I didn’t know anything about financial aid or FAFSA. One student in my class said something about it and I was like, ‘What is that?’”

Running into problems without a legal guardian

In senior year, Tytianna learned about financial aid. “My teacher started explaining financial aid,” she says. “I was new to it, but all I heard was Pell Grant and that it’d help pay for college. I was like, ‘Okay, I’m down for it.’”

But Tytianna immediately ran into a problem.

“My mom passed away four years ago,” she explains. “It was hard to fill out my FAFSA because you have to have your parents W-2 tax forms and all that stuff.”

“Even though I live with my uncle, he’s not my legal guardian. After my mom passed, nobody went to court and claimed guardianship of me.”

Tytianna talked to her counselor, Mr. Freeman. “He made some calls, and then we went to the school’s office to talk to one of the office workers. She told me they had to do some paperwork that would list me as homeless in my school records to be able to do my FAFSA.” That way, Tytianna wouldn’t have to worry about getting information about parents that she couldn’t get.

“At first, I thought it was going to be too much work. But I didn’t really have to do much,” she recalls. The school’s office staff prepared the paperwork and had it sent to an office downtown.

“I knew it was what I had to do. The office worker and my counselor understood where I was coming from. Once they were able to get my status updated in the system, they let me know so I could do my FAFSA.”

Making her family proud

Tytianna went to Get2College for help filling out her FAFSA. “It was easy. I filled it out with one of the counselors there,” she remembers.

“When I found out I was getting financial aid, I was like, ‘Okay, that is out of the way.’ One more step out of the way for me to go to college.”

“It took about 20 or 30 minutes. Basically, all I had to do was put in my name, my Social Security number, birth date, address and school — basic information. And I had to put down which schools I wanted my FAFSA information sent to.”

“Everybody there was nice and willing to help me get my FAFSA done so I could go to college. I knew they weren’t going to turn me away,” Tytianna says.

“When I found out I was getting financial aid, I was like, ‘Okay, that is out of the way.’ One more step out of the way for me to go to college.”

Tytianna also found out that the college she would be attending was giving her a soccer scholarship.

“Everybody in my family is very excited. I’m not the first to go to college, but this is the first time somebody got a soccer scholarship,” she says.

Tytianna’s advice: You’ll make it through it

“If you don’t have a parent or your parent is deceased then it makes it hard, but I made it through it,” she says.

“Other than that, if you have your parents, and they have their W-2s, then you are good to go. And you’d better fill out that FAFSA if your parents don’t have money to be spending on college. FAFSA is not for your grades — it is for how much income is coming to your household.”

“This is the next step in my life. High school was one step and college is the next, so I can do better in life.”

Tytianna will be attending Southwest Mississippi Community College and will play soccer while in school. She plans to study nursing because her mom was a nurse.

FAFSA completion in Utah increases for second year in a row

Posted on September 21, 2018November 8, 2018 by Ryan

About 35.5% of Utah high school seniors completed the 2018-2019 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) from October 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018, reflecting a 0.9% increase over the previous year, according to the Form Your Future FAFSA Tracker.

Utah has made excellent progress in improving FAFSA completion for high school seniors over the past several years, including a stunning 39% increase in FAFSA completion for the 2017-2018 FAFSA. While Utah has made substantial progress in helping students complete the FAFSA, Utah remains 51st in the nation (including the District of Columbia) for FAFSA completion.

The FAFSA directly impacts college affordability and access for students. Nationally, 90% of high school seniors who complete the FAFSA attend college directly after high school, compared to 55% of non-completers. The FAFSA is the only way that Utah students can access all federal, state, and institutional aid in the form of grants, work-study, and federal student loans.

The Utah System of Higher Education is committed to removing financial barriers to higher education by promoting FAFSA completion throughout the state with several exciting updates.

The 2018-2019 FAFSA Completion Challenge

The Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority (UHEAA) outreach team, which operates its outreach efforts under StepUp to Higher Education, was awarded a $40,000 grant by the National College Access Network to improve FAFSA completion by at least 5% for high school seniors in West Valley City. In partnership with Granite School District and other community partners, UHEAA’s strategy to increase FAFSA completion rates has three key focuses:

Perform targeted outreach
Strengthen existing cross-sectoral partnerships
Increase access and use of FAFSA completion data

While the grant strategies focus on Granite School District schools, USHE is encouraging the state to increase FAFSA completion statewide by 5% to increase completion rates to 40% of high school seniors.

Other resources to promote FAFSA completion

StepUp houses the FAFSA completion data from Federal Student Aid. In coordination with K12 and college access partners throughout the state, StepUp provides secure student-level data to inform counselors and college access personnel which students have completed the FAFSA and which students have been selected for verification.

In addition to providing student-level data, StepUp will host over 115 FAFSA completion events throughout the state to help high school seniors complete the 2019-2020 FAFSA. These open houses allow students and parents to receive expert help with the FAFSA to complete it quickly and accurately, as well gives students as an opportunity to receive one of six $500 scholarships offered by StepUp for students who complete their FAFSA.

StepUp also produces annual content updates to assist with FAFSA completion, including the 2019-2020 FAFSA DIY Kit, a resource to help counselors and educators promote FAFSA completion and host their own FAFSA completion open house and a FAFSA Walkthrough Video to help students and parents complete the FAFSA on their own time.

For the 2019-2020 FAFSA, Federal Student Aid has updated the look and feel of the FAFSA to make for a better user experience across all devices (computers, tablets, and mobile phones). In addition to making the FAFSA accessible on a wide variety of devices, Federal Student Aid has released the myStudentAid mobile app.

For additional questions about FAFSA completion efforts throughout the state, please contact UHEAA Community Outreach Specialist Jacob Newman Jacob Newman at jnewman@utahsbr.edu or at 801-366-8487.

How One State Increased FAFSA Completion by 26 Percent

Posted on September 12, 2018November 8, 2018 by Ryan

In the 2016-17 school year, the Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance (LOSFA) was one of 22 organizations selected by NCAN as a grantee for the FAFSA Completion Challenge, which was sponsored by the Kresge Foundation. This grant work laid the foundation for how LOSFA would strategize to increase FAFSA completion in Louisiana in 2017-18.

Prior to this, the Louisiana Department of Education implemented a new financial aid access policy that would require students, beginning with the 2018 high school senior class, to complete one of four tasks in order to graduate: submit a FAFSA, complete the state aid application, submit an opt-out form, or request a waiver from their school system. This new policy, along with several other strategies, would lead to Louisiana’s 25.9 percent year-over-year increase in FAFSA completion.

In a recent webinar hosted by NCAN, Dr. Sujuan Boutte, executive director of LOSFA, describes her organization’s three keys to FAFSA completion success: collaborative efforts, providing wraparound services, and developing a strategy to engage students and parents. In any collaboration, it’s important for partners to build off of each other’s individual strengths and to share a common collaborative goal, which was to minimize students’ loan debt and maximize their gift aid awards. Next, you want to provide support services that help familiarize students with college, the college application process, college options, etc. Lastly, it is important to determine the best setting and method on how you will engage parents and students, whether one-on-one or in a large group, with a hands-off or hands-on approach.

To increase FAFSA completion among Louisiana students, here are six steps LOSFA took:

Used a one-on-one approach. One of LOSFA’s strategies for increasing FAFSA completion was to work with students and parents separately on completing their respective portions of the application. LOSFA worked with the students during the school day to complete the student portion of the FAFSA and would invite parents to the school during the evening hours to complete the parent portion of the FAFSA.
Developed a peer-to-peer financial aid education program. LOSFA started a FAFSA Ambassadors program where current college students who were former program participants help high school seniors fill out their FAFSA. The FAFSA Ambassadors serve a great purpose, as they are influential, relatable, and have personal experience to share to help demystify the financial aid application process, making it less intimidating.
Created a FAFSA competition. The office of Federal Student Aid offers data on FAFSA completion at the state, high school, and district levels. With that information, LOSFA made its own website portal – Compete to Complete – where administrators, teachers, and others could see their state, district, and high school ranks, in terms of how many students had filled out the FAFSA. Louisiana school administrators checked this site often and got excited about their progress, creating friendly competition! LOSFA considers week-to-week and month-to-month percent increases and awards schools based on their progress. This levels the playing field and balances out schools that may have had a stronger start to FAFSA completion or serve a large senior class size. The effect is to give all schools something to play for. For NCAN members who may not have the resources to create their own database and website, you can use NCAN’s #FormYourFuture FAFSA Tracker. This tracker monitors FAFSA completion at the high school, city, and state levels.
Offered meaningful incentives. If you’re going to have prizes as incentives to motivate students to complete their FAFSA, you should know what students value and need, said Boutte. For LOSFA, students valued supply graduation vouchers – vouchers that could be used toward purchasing items such as a cap and gown – concession stand food vouchers, certificates to restaurants, and pizza parties.
Used various modes of communication. College access providers should communicate with students in different ways to remind them about FAFSA-related events. One method LOSFA used was one-calls, which are automated phone messages that typically came from a high school principal, to remind parents about events. These messages included details about the materials parents needed to bring to a FAFSA completion workshop. In addition to one-calls, LOSFA also used PSAs, videos, Signal Vine text messaging, and social media to get the word out.
Provided easily accessible resources. As an additional way to assist teachers, school administrators, counselors, and college access providers, the Louisiana Department of Education developed a financial aid webpage. This webpage contains resources, such as the financial aid library, which includes a financial aid lesson plan, financial aid events calendar, verification resources, and much more. This webpage also served as a guide to provide teachers and school administrators with the knowledge and ability to ensure students were able to complete the new graduation requirement. For additional support, LOSFA’s field outreach services had staff readily available to facilitate FAFSA presentations and workshops to students in the classroom, answer FAFSA-related questions, and explain the importance of filling out the FAFSA.

We know that completing a FAFSA is a means to having access to college. LOSFA shows us that when you have dedicated individuals working around a common goal, anything is possible. We look forward to continuing to learn from the FAFSA-completion work that LOSFA is doing and sharing best practices.

(Image via http://competetocompletela.org/)

Oct. 18, 2018: This piece has been updated to include the correct creator of the financial aid webpage for Louisiana teachers, school administrators, and others.