October 2020 - Form Your Future

Get2College’s Advice for Planning and Hosting a Drive-In FAFSA Completion Event

Posted on October 22, 2020January 7, 2021 by Bill DeBaun

By Jamese Carrell, Member Services Associate

A FAFSA drive-in was the talk of the virtual town at this year’s NCAN 2020 conference. And because of all the excitement around this type of event, we wanted to share with the larger network the inspiration and planning it will take to develop a drive-in event within your community.

To learn all about this type of event, we sat down with Get2College staff members Shannon Grimsley, outreach program director, and Danny Thompson, assistant director of GEAR UP outreach. Get2College is a program of the Woodward Hines Education Foundation in Mississippi and an NCAN member.

So what exactly is a FAFSA drive-in? In four short bullet points, here’s the best way to explain it:

The FAFSA drive-in will happen in an outdoor school space with strict COVID-19 guidelines. Appointments will be 45 minutes each.
Families will drive up (stay in their cars) to a tent and be greeted by a staff member, who will be socially distant.
Staff will conduct a FAFSA appointment similar to how they would in a normal (pre-pandemic) setting. Families will either be provided a tablet or laptop for screen-sharing to complete the FAFSA, which will be projected on a screen so that Get2College staff can monitor the responses.
Families and students will leave the appointment with newly created FSA IDs, (if not already pre-created) and a completed Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and Mississippi Aid Application (MAAPP).

Here’s what else you need to know about planning and hosting a drive-in FAFSA event:

What sparked the FAFSA drive-in idea?

This idea was born out of Get2College’s awareness of high student need and much of what they already knew about Mississippi students in rural areas and beyond, i.e., lack of access to stable internet and/or caring adults with financial aid application knowledge.

“We know how important it is to these students. They need this or they wouldn’t go to college,” says Thompson.

What was the planning process like?

When the idea for the drive-in workshop was shared and discussed, TJ Walker, director of the North MS Get2College Center, volunteered to pilot the drive-in at one of his area schools. Determining the location was easy; Walker had a pre-established relationship with the piloting high school. The staff knew transportation was a major barrier, so it was important to host the event in a central and accessible location.

Walker also cast a wide net to recruit staff members. Due to COVID-19, staff participation for this event was voluntary. Walker also sourced the group of staff volunteers to ask what supplies were needed, to really brainstorm and cross-check that they would have everything they needed to make the event successful.

What types of resources does it take to implement this type of event?

This FAFSA drive-in will take a place in a high school’s open parking lot area to maintain social distancing and other COVID-related precautions to ensure the safety of staff volunteers, students, and families. Below you’ll see a snapshot list of supplies needed to conduct a drive-in. Please note: This is not a finalized list, but rather a place to get started and items to consider. A major consideration is to determine materials needed for an outdoor event in your area, as weather conditions vary during fall across the nation.

Supply List (this list is not an exhaustive list):

Surge protectors
Paper
Tables
Chairs
Folders
Heat/cooling mechanisms
Face masks
Hand Sanitizer
Disinfectant wipes
Gloves

Bigger-Ticket Items:

Mobile Hotspots
Tents
Generators
Printer(s)
Face shields
Laptops (or tablets)

What types of communications and marketing will you use to get the word out about the event?

The key to this work, particularly in rural areas, is relationships. Get2College staff cites the support of city officials, mayors, and school boards, who are helping to get the word out and secure buy-in for participation from families. The rural communities are tight-knit and they know what works.

For other communications during FAFSA season, Get2College uses Signal Vine, postcards, and social media – they even have FAFSA and social media toolkits (free for anyone to use).

What advice would you give to NCAN members who want to hold a FAFSA drive-in?

The first would be tap into partnerships. From our time speaking with Get2College, it was clear partnerships really helped scale their work and efforts. Find the trusted places and people in the communities of the families you are trying to reach.

Also, recognize that completing a FAFSA requires sharing sensitive financial information, so here’s where that trust aspect comes in again. Be sure to use communications and messages that create a sense of security and care.

We are appreciative to have been able to spend time with Get2College to get a sneak peek of this innovative FAFSA completion event and wish them a successful drive-in later this month.

For more coverage of Get2College’s drive-in FAFSA plans, check out this story from the Washington Post.

#FormYourFuture FAFSA Tracker Gets a Makeover, Returns for ’21-22 Cycle

Posted on October 20, 2020November 5, 2020 by Bill DeBaun

By Bill DeBaun, Director of Data and Evaluation, NCAN

NCAN’s #FormYourFuture FAFSA Tracker has become a favored resource for policymakers, practitioners, and the public, and it returns now just in time for the 2021-22 FAFSA cycle.

The Tracker recently underwent a technical and aesthetic facelift that streamlines its features and adds new ones that NCAN hopes will improve usability as visitors track Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completions at the national, state, city, district, and school levels.

Earlier this month, Federal Student Aid released the first two batches of data for the cycle on high school seniors’ FAFSA completions. NCAN anticipates updating the FAFSA Tracker on a weekly basis from now until June 30 and semi-monthly thereafter.

This is the fourth FAFSA cycle the Tracker will cover. The tool got its start during the 2018-19 FAFSA cycle (2017-18 academic year).

Some features will be familiar to longtime users; the landing page still starts off by describing the state of FAFSA completion nationally. It then highlights the top five states by year-over-year percent change and estimated percentage of the senior class completing before offering the full rankings. New feature alert: Rolling over a state in the rankings chart will pop up a comparison of that state’s progress against the nation’s overall.

Clicking on the “View State Data” button at the bottom of the page takes users to a state profile page. Selecting a state with the drop-down menu displays that state’s data by a variety of high school characteristics. Scrolling further down, users can filter by city, district, and school and see rankings of high schools at each level by year-over-year percent change in FAFSA completions.

Especially this last spring, interest in and usage of the FAFSA Tracker swelled as the COVID-19 pandemic severely reduced the number of students completing a FAFSA. Through Sept. 11, there were 4.2% fewer FAFSAs completed than through last year, representing about 100,000 fewer students who may have left federal grant and loan aid on the table. Only Hawaii finished the 2020-21 FAFSA cycle with more completions than the 2019-20 cycle.

NCAN estimates that just 61.2% of the class of 2020 completed a FAFSA, which is less than the 62% that completed through late August 2019 in the previous cycle.

Although the Tracker now displays data from the first several days of the 2021-22 cycle, we shouldn’t expect to learn too much from this initial batch of information. It will be tempting to project all kinds of hypotheses about how the COVID-19 will affect FAFSA completion, but resist that temptation.

One data point does not a trend make, and the picture will be clearer on Nov. 1 than it is today.

As users explore the revamped FAFSA Tracker, they should be sure to report any bugs or glitches to Bill DeBaun, NCAN’s director of data and evaluation, at debaunb@ncan.org. Did the makeover leave features you used often on the cutting room floor? Send that feedback, too!

College Board Offers $1,000 Scholarships for FAFSA Completion, a Chatbot for Support

Posted on October 9, 2020June 23, 2021 by Bill DeBaun

The “Complete the FAFSA” step of the College Board Opportunity Scholarships (CBOS) program is designed to reward high school seniors for applying for financial aid. By completing this critical step, students give themselves access to aid to pay for college and a chance to win $1,000.

Students can take these steps to get involved:

If you haven’t already, join the CBOS program.
Go to My Action Plan and select the complete scholarship card.
If you have submitted the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or a state aid form, or are ineligible to complete both the FAFSA and a state aid form, select the “Confirm your qualification” button in the FAFSA scholarship card.

A larger number of “Complete the FAFSA” scholarships will be awarded in the remaining months of 2020, presumably as a way to encourage students to complete the form sooner rather than later:

200 “Complete the FAFSA” scholarships will be awarded at the end of October, November, and December.
100 scholarships will be awarded at the end of January and February.

Some state programs award financial aid on a first-come, first-served basis, so students can lose out on potential aid dollars if they complete the FAFSA later in the application cycle.

Seniors do not have to complete other steps in the CBOS program to qualify for the $1,000 “Complete the FAFSA” scholarship.

The CBOS program guides high school students through six steps of the college planning process. Completing each step earns students a chance to win scholarships of $500 to $2,000 through monthly drawings; doing all six steps also earns them a chance at a $40,000 scholarship. Notably for the NCAN community, College Board has designated at least half of all the scholarships for students whose families earn less than $60,000 per year.

Free FAFSA Assistance Chatbot

Does your student need additional FAFSA help? Well, meet Wyatt. Wyatt is a personal FAFSA assistance chatbot that became available on Oct. 1. Students can sign up here to begin to access Wyatt for free. Wyatt is always available to help and is powered by AI.

According to College Board, Wyatt will help address barriers to FAFSA completion, reply with timely and relevant information developed by experts, and send biweekly nudges about FAFSA completion and the “Complete the FAFSA” CBOS scholarship.

NCAN members can access a Sept. 10 webinar recording to learn more about this step, CBOS, and Wyatt. Note: You must log in to the webinar archives using your NCAN member account.

If you have additional questions about the “Complete the FAFSA” scholarship, check out these FAQs.