FAFSA Renewals Down 12%, Nearly 900,000 Students Through March 31

Posted on April 27, 2022June 15, 2022 by Bill DeBaun

By Bill DeBaun, NCAN Senior Director of Data and Strategic Initiatives

As of the end of March, FAFSA applications for the 2022-23 cycle were down 8.9% year-over-year. More specifically, FAFSA renewals from currently enrolled college students declined 12.3%, and renewals from Pell Grant-eligible students plummeted by 15.6%.

These figures come from data released to NCAN by Federal Student Aid (FSA), and they portend very bad news in the short term for college student retention, persistence, and completion rates. NCAN’s interactive dashboard displays this new data.

View the FAFSA renewals dashboard.

From Oct. 1, 2021, to mid-January 2022, the number of completed FAFSAs (first-time and renewals combined) faced double-digit declines year-over-year and bottomed out at -23.1% through mid-December. Renewals alone were somehow even more dire, hitting a low of -32.8% at the end of November. Pell Grant-eligible renewals saw their steepest decline at -35.8% in mid-November.

Compared to the pre-pandemic 2019-20 FAFSA cycle, 2022-23 Pell-eligible renewals are down 19.2%, which is an almost inconceivably large number seven months into the cycle.

All three categories (overall applicants, renewals, Pell-eligible renewals) saw their trend reverse after mid-January and have steadily climbed since then. But each group was still substantially in the red at the end of March.

Considering applicant income levels, renewals from students with annual incomes less than or equal to $25,000 have declined 16.5% year-over-year, representing about 420,000 fewer students. Students reporting between $25,000 and $50,000 in income are down 10.1% (about 158,000 fewer students), and students reporting more than $50,000 in income have declined 9.9% (about 269,000 fewer students).

No state has a positive year-over-year change in FAFSA renewals. The average decline is 12.5%, while Indiana has the steepest drop at -17.7%.

NCAN previously analyzed renewal declines during the 2020-21 FAFSA cycle two months into the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic caused considerable disruptions to FAFSA completion (among, more broadly, every other aspect of the education system and our lives), but the declines observed through March 2022 in the 2022-23 cycle dwarf those from two years ago. The headline of NCAN’s May 2020 analysis, “Nearly 250,000 Fewer Low-Income FAFSA Renewals This Cycle Nationally” is somehow an upgrade relative to the 420,000 fewer students we currently observe.

These steep declines in overall and renewal applications in the 2022-23 cycle occurred despite the encouraging performance of the high school class of 2022. FAFSA completions for current high school seniors were up 3.9% year-over-year through April 8, driven by strong year-over-year increases by students in high schools serving more students from low-income backgrounds, Black students, and Hispanic students. Another boost came from newly implemented universal FAFSA policies in Texas and Alabama; both states are up more than 20% year-over-year.

What is Driving the Decline in FAFSA Renewals?

There are many plausible explanations for these steep declines in FAFSA renewals, but it’s hard to pin this performance on any one of them.

Structurally, college-going faces some headwinds right now. The hot economy may be having an impact, with starting wages up and perhaps luring students on the margin away from academic programs and into the workforce. Beyond that, there are many factors making college a less feasible or appealing option right now (e.g., virtual classes, vaccination and masking requirements, disruptions from having to isolate when positive, weekly COVID testing). Even more broadly, students may be questioning the value of a postsecondary degree.

Also worth noting is that high schools are having to triage supports to students, with learning loss and academics, mental wellness, and basic needs often getting more attention and investment than postsecondary transitions. Students from the high school graduating classes of 2020 and 2021 may have missed out on supports and foundations that would have contributed to postsecondary persistence and resilience.

More narrowly, NCAN members have noted that the performance of the FAFSA website has periodically been a hindrance over the course of this cycle. Students have experienced outages and error messages and been bounced from the system before submitting their information. Additionally, we note that FSA sent out renewal email reminders later than it did in previous years. It is impossible to believe either of these is a primary driver of the massive declines we are observing, but it is plausible they contribute in some ways that are secondary to the structural challenges shifting students’ choices.

How Can We Help More Students Stay Enrolled in College?

Students still have lots of time to renew their FAFSAs, but this data is especially concerning for what it may signal: a broad shift in students’ intent to re-enroll. Students who leave college with loan debt and no degree face perilous prospects with regard to future earnings and loan repayment outcomes.

NCAN will continue to monitor and analyze this data. In the meantime, we strongly recommend that the K-12 and higher education sectors use their federal pandemic relief dollars (ESSER and HEERF funds, respectively) to focus on postsecondary transitions, retention, persistence, and completion supports, as appropriate. That includes preparing summer melt interventions, contracting with external partners to provide additional capacity where needed, and engaging students to understand how and why their plans might be changing and what we can be doing to support them and keep them enrolled.

In the meantime, institutions, states, and the education field need to examine their enrollment expectations for the fall. As currently projected, far fewer students than anticipated may arrive on campus during the 2022-23 academic year, and that will have significant impacts on those students, their communities, states, and the nation overall.

View the FAFSA renewals dashboard.

5 Key Components of State FAFSA Challenges

Posted on November 15, 2021June 15, 2022 by Bill DeBaun

By Jesse Kannam, Master of Public Policy Candidate at UC Berkeley

Exciting momentum is building across the country regarding the importance of talking about the financial aid process in schools and encouraging the completion of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The FAFSA form represents a crucial part of students’ transition from K-12 education to postsecondary since it is the key to accessing federal financial aid as well as many types of state and institutional aid.

This issue is especially pertinent due to declines in immediate college enrollment among recent high school graduates and FAFSA completion since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Communities and organizations have adapted to the virtual environment through innovations like live online chat platforms, virtual events, and one-on-one virtual advising meetings for families and students. One key step some communities have been taking to boost financial aid application numbers is to launch initiatives and campaigns to increase FAFSA completion among students, often called FAFSA challenges. These challenges often spur friendly competition among schools or communities and offer incentives to students and families.

Over the past five years, states, cities, and localities have organized FAFSA challenges as a strategy to increase the number of graduating high school seniors who complete the FAFSA and understand the amount of federal aid they can receive to help support their postsecondary education. Research indicates that strategies like offering personalized assistance, providing information about financial aid early in the college application process, and using data to inform outreach to students are effective in increasing FAFSA completion, and many FAFSA challenges include these elements within their campaigns.

In an effort to document what works, a few organizations have analyzed these initiatives, including the National College Attainment Network (NCAN)’s evaluation of its FAFSA Completion Challenge and the Education Strategy Group’s recommendations based on interviews with state and local stakeholders.

So, where do you start? Or, how can you improve your state’s existing FAFSA challenge? One strategy is to pull from the best ideas from states that have already approached the issue.

This blog post provides an overview of the common elements that states used in their FAFSA challenges in the 2020-21 school year. While the resources linked below are not exhaustive, hopefully, they are a good first step!

Eligibility

Some states establish requirements for a school or district to be eligible to participate in their FAFSA challenges, receive supplementary support resources, or qualify for prizes.

For example, in New York, eligible schools must have student bodies where at least of 50% students are economically disadvantaged, and a minimum of 20 students in their 12th-grade class, among other requirements. In Connecticut, to be eligible to participate in the state’s FAFSA Challenge Learning Community and receive seed grant funding, schools had to have a FAFSA completion rate below 50%, more than 45% of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch, and a 12th-grade class of more than 50 students.

School & District Categories

States are also intentional about segmenting schools and districts into categories to compare FAFSA completion rates more fairly. Winners are then chosen for each category.

While some states create categories by school or district size, others categorize schools and/or districts by type and/or geography.

Winners and Prizes

States designate winning schools and/or districts in a variety of ways. Some states reward the schools that had the most students complete FAFSA, others reward schools that improved the most compared to their number of student filers the previous year, and some reward both. States also include prize categories that prioritize equity, innovation, and progress over various periods. Some examples of prize categories include:

Overall highest percentage of FAFSA completions.
Overall highest percentage increase in FAFSA completions.
Largest week-to-week improvement (DC).
Innovation:
- Statewide (Missouri, North Carolina).
- High-need districts (North Carolina).
- Monthly (Arizona).
Percentage of students from low-income backgrounds who filed (Missouri).

States use a variety of incentives to encourage students, families, school administrators, and staff to help increase the number of students completing the FAFSA. Connecticut, Missouri, and North Carolina offered cash prizes. For example, Missouri decided to award $750 to winning schools, while Connecticut awarded $5,000 to winning schools. The District of Columbia, Florida, and Michigan used combinations of gifts, trophies, and public recognition as incentives, and the Arizona challenge rewarded specific groups (students, schools, and counselors) with different prizes.

Additionally, within states, schools sometimes use incentives to encourage students to complete the FAFSA. These incentives can include graduation tassels, gift cards, and t-shirts. In some cases, these prizes and incentives are gifted by local partners, do not require financial resources, or are purchased through seed funding provided to the state or district, and therefore are a cost-effective strategy.

Data Sharing and Dashboards

To monitor and share FAFSA completion progress, some states made completion rate data publicly available. States utilized data visualization and disaggregation tools like Tableau. Information is disaggregated by school, district, and in some cases by county or region. See below for links to each state’s data dashboards:

Here are a few things states can consider as they create their data dashboards. These are my personal opinions and are not based on surveys or feedback solicited from school leaders or communities.

Who is your audience? Is it students and parents? School leaders and staff? Some of the data dashboards appear overwhelming with the amount of information shared on the opening page. Any way in which states can offer multiple viewing options may be helpful for those who just want high-level takeaways rather than school-by-school information.
Share the estimated amount of Pell Grant dollars students receive after they complete the FAFSA. To be eligible for Pell Grants, students must complete the FAFSA. The maximum grant amount shifts from year to year. For the 2021-22 aid cycle, students could receive a maximum of $6,495. Grant size is determined by financial need, and unlike a loan, Pell Grants do not need to be repaid (except under a few circumstances). The amount of grant aid that becomes available after students complete the FAFSA is a clear and inspiring metric that can be shared with your community.
Display how the state is measuring against its established goal. Prior to the challenge, some states stated a goal for a percentage of students in the state they hoped would complete the FAFSA. Showing how a state is measuring against its goal is another clear metric to share with your community.
Engage users with visual tools. Maps can help draw an audience to potential geographic gaps in completion. The use of color gradients can also point to completion trends across a state.
Allow for filtering for students from low-income backgrounds. Some states included a filter in their dashboard that allowed users to see FAFSA rates for schools that had certain percentages of students from families with low incomes. This is a useful tool to see if states are implementing FAFSA completion efforts equitably and if states should put in additional work to reach students who could benefit most from financial aid.

Resources and Partnerships Available to Participating Districts

To strengthen statewide campaigns, state agencies and partner organizations often provide resources to the districts participating in FAFSA challenges. Arizona, the District of Columbia, Florida, and New York created challenge toolkits. Meanwhile, Arizona, North Carolina, and Rhode Island shared step-by-step guides for filling out the FAFSA. To spread the word and foster excitement, some states also created social media toolkits, like Missouri (scroll to FAFSA Filing section) and North Carolina.

To leverage existing capacity, a few states used their partnership with the College Advising Corps to have near-peer student advisers support FAFSA completion efforts within the schools they served.

According to the Form Your Future FAFSA Tracker, as of Sept. 24, 58.8% of the high school class of 2021 had completed a FAFSA, 4.2% lower than last year during this time. There is still much work to be done!

And while tracking FAFSA completion rates is central to these initiatives, there are so many other less-tangible benefits that come from communitywide FAFSA challenges. These initiatives raise awareness about financial aid opportunities and encourage partnerships between schools and community-based organizations with expertise and capacity in financial aid and college access.

On Oct. 1, the FAFSA for the 2022-23 aid cycle became available for students to complete. Use this blog post as a tool as your community organizes its own FAFSA challenge initiative to help make college accessible and affordable to more students.

North Carolina Model Offers Promising Statewide Approach to Driving FAFSA Completion

Posted on October 26, 2021June 15, 2022 by Bill DeBaun

By Stephanie Breen, NCAN Program Fellow

Over the past two years, North Carolina launched a statewide initiative to increase the number of high school students completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Using data-driven approaches, myFutureNC and the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority (NCSEAA) have worked diligently with community partners and education nonprofits to better support school-based practitioners and families in their FAFSA completion efforts. Some of the key players in these collaborative efforts include Carolina Demography, College Foundation of North Carolina (CFNC), College Advising Corps, the Hunt Institute, and the John M. Belk Endowment.

With a progressive focus on improving FAFSA completion rates across the state, myFutureNC developed a six-pronged approach to catalyze the process. The six strategies include:

Setting a FAFSA completion goal.
Building shared ownership of FAFSA completion across K-12 and higher education stakeholders.
Creating incentives for local and regional implementation of FAFSA completion best practices.
Using data to target support and report progress.
Establishing partnerships to provide training and support.
Spreading awareness to practitioners, the public, and policymakers about the value of FAFSA completion.

In setting FAFSA completion goals, myFutureNC collaborated with various stakeholders to develop a statewide goal of attaining an 80% FAFSA completion rate by 2030.

The organization connected this FAFSA completion goal with the education continuum of indicators through an interactive dashboard as well as statewide and county attainment profiles. Individuals can track the state’s vision and shared educational attainment goal of having 2 million North Carolinians with credentials or degrees. This tie to existing initiatives and priorities helped to build awareness and momentum and created buy-in at the state and local levels.

North Carolina’s First in FAFSA Challenge incentivizes administrators and counselors to boost FAFSA completion rates within their schools with a chance to win a $500 grant. The First in FAFSA Challenge tracks FAFSA completion rates across various school types and sizes drawn from federally reported data.

During the 2020-21 academic year, the first year of this challenge, nearly 77% of all public schools in North Carolina participated. The First in FAFSA collaborative awarded five Innovation Grants to schools that employed innovative strategies to boost their FAFSA completion rates for their senior classes.

The First in FAFSA Tracker has also provided local and regional stakeholders with tangible data that they can use to track district- and countywide progression in FAFSA completion. The tracker allows practitioners to identify their school’s progress compared to the completion rates of peer schools that share similar characteristics, including senior class size, the number of students of color, and the percentage of students from low-income backgrounds.

The data populating the First in FAFSA tracker have been available since 2014 via a student-level database run by the NCSEAA. But it’s these data, the First in FAFSA completion initiative, and the interactive dashboard displaying the data working in concert that are so promising in North Carolina.

As of 2021, 97% of North Carolina’s public schools have access to student-level data through the Finish the FAFSA platform. The platform provides data on students who have completed the FAFSA, which students have FAFSA errors and what those errors are, and which applications require further verification. By employing this tool, school practitioners are better equipped to monitor their students’ progression toward FAFSA completion and provide targeted support as needed.

“We wanted to make sure that data and the powerful combination of tools that were already in place across the state were more accessible to counselors. This would allow counselors to target their efforts in supporting students and families,” said Cris Charbonneau, director of advocacy and engagement at myFutureNC. “That’s where the connection between resources, practices, data, and tools have gone a long way in helping to lift up our FAFSA completion goals.”

In addition to data, at the core of this work is the commitment to spreading awareness about FAFSA completion practices through P-20 partnerships in North Carolina. This is being accomplished through myFutureNC’s communication channels as well as statewide communities of practice.

myFutureNC has collaborated with a number of community organizations to build momentum and awareness through the following programming:

Hosting FAFSA Kickoff webinars with a statewide collaborative of 49 school districts to discuss how guidance counselors can navigate challenges and tricky situations related to the FAFSA.
Offering statewide drive-in FAFSA completion events through virtual, hybrid, and in-person models. Students and families can get financial aid assistance at college campuses across the state throughout April, a practice that is continuing to support FAFSA completion efforts this fall.
Disseminating FAFSA completion and college readiness-related resources to families, students, and practitioners, such as a YouTube series on navigating college as a first-generation college student, free and virtual FAFSA assistance to Latinx families, and e-newsletters with updates and invitations to FAFSA events.
Establishing a FAFSA Network to provide on-the-ground training and support for a community of practice for practitioners in 42 priority districts. These districts were selected due to FAFSA completion as an opportunity for growth on their myFutureNC county attainment profile and other criteria.

While this blog offers a snapshot into the breadth of the exciting FAFSA completion strategies in North Carolina, NCAN encourages those who want to emulate these approaches to explore myFutureNC’s platform further.

In the coming months, NCAN will continue to highlight promising FAFSA completion practices to help practitioners and community organizations think collaboratively and creatively about boosting FAFSA completion rates in their states.

NCAN’s FAFSA Tracker Returns for 5th Year Hoping for a Trendline Turnaround

Posted on October 18, 2021June 15, 2022 by Bill DeBaun

By Bill DeBaun, Director of Data and Evaluation, National College Attainment Network

Oct. 1 is a major milestone on every college access professional’s calendar because it’s opening day for the new FAFSA cycle. The good news is NCAN’s FAFSA Tracker is back for the fifth consecutive year to help practitioners, policymakers, and the public track high school FAFSA completions at the national, state, city, district, and school levels. The bad news is for the past two FAFSA cycles there have been fewer completions to track.

The nascent 2022-23 FAFSA cycle, which will represent class of 2022 high school seniors, opens on the heels of two consecutive cycles experiencing FAFSA completion declines. By July 2, the high school class of 2021 completed 4.8% fewer FAFSAs than the class of 2020; this represented about 102,000 fewer FAFSA completions and just 53.3% of the senior class. By June 30 of last year, the class of 2020 had about 81,000 fewer FAFSA completions than the class of 2019, representing a 3.7% decline.

Over the summer, it was a tale of two cycles. The class of 2021 slowly clawed back some momentum and rose to -4.2% year-over-year by the end of September. Meanwhile, the class of 2020 declined from -3.7% to -4.2% by Sept. 11 of last year. Neither case is all that encouraging, but all things being equal we’d rather see an upward trend than not.

This all adds up to a sobering reality: across the classes of 2020 and 2021, more than a quarter-million fewer seniors completed a FAFSA than we would have expected, due to the pandemic.

Unfortunately, declines in FAFSA completion have been inequitably distributed, with public high schools serving more students from low-income backgrounds and more students of color seeing fewer FAFSAs completed than their counterparts.

As previously noted, these figures portend a potentially rough postsecondary enrollment landscape for the current fall semester. The catastrophic enrollment declines reported on by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center came on the heels of both a smaller FAFSA completion decline last year and a larger percentage of seniors completing the FAFSA.

Updates to the FAFSA Tracker

Turning toward the current cycle, there are a few changes and additions to the Form Your Future FAFSA Tracker:

Most notably, the 12^th-grade enrollment figures used to calculate the percentage of seniors completing at the national and state levels are now based on data from the 10^th edition of Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education (WICHE)’s Knocking on the College Door report. Previously, these enrollment figures were based on projections from the 9^th edition of the report, now they are based on actual reported enrollment headcounts from the states. The update applies to all cycles in the Tracker, and the trendlines in the Compare By Cycle dashboard reflect this.
- Functionally, this means that most states will see a decline of three to four percentage points in their percent of seniors completing compared to what they might expect. Because high school graduation rates are (and have been) increasing, and schools are getting better at retaining students, the number of 12^th-grade students is increasing relative to WICHE’s previous projections. This means denominators are growing, and average completion rates consequently decrease when we’re comparing 9^th and 10^th edition calculations.
- A comparison of 9^th and 10^th edition calculations based on the 2021-22 FAFSA cycle shows that moving to 10^th edition data creates a decrease in the percentage of students completing a FAFSA in 48 states. The average decline is 3.2 percentage points.
- Questions, concerns, and consternation about this change can be directed to me at debaunb@ncan.org
The FAFSA Tracker is pleased to add a new dashboard that shows FAFSA completions by district and high school. This dashboard is filterable at the state, city, district, and school levels and shows total completions, by date of the cycle, for the current and previous cycle.
Although the Tracker previously showed year-over-year percent change by public high schools’ Title I eligibility, this year we’ve switched that metric to display comparisons between low- and higher-income high schools. We use the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s cutoff of +/- 50% of students on free- or reduced-price lunch to categorize high schools. We made this switch because of a low sample size of Title I-eligible high schools in the National Center for Education Statistics data.

NCAN remains grateful for the enthusiasm we receive about the FAFSA Tracker, and we are pleased to be able to continue to provide and update this valuable tool. Updates will generally come every Friday pending the availability of FAFSA completion data from Federal Student Aid.

Our fingers are crossed that the class of 2022 will break the downward trend in FAFSA completion declines, and we will be monitoring this cycle closely to provide updates and insights periodically.

6 Ways to Make FAFSA Completion a Community-Wide Effort

Posted on September 14, 2021June 15, 2022 by Bill DeBaun

This piece originally appeared on the Principal Project blog. It is reposted here with permission.

By Ralph Aiello

For many students, the ability to enroll in and complete college hinges on financial barriers that can feel outside of a family’s control. The truth is, students who need aid to attend college are often eligible for quite a bit – but to receive it, they must first fill out the FAFSA, which can feel intimidating and confusing – especially to low-income and first-generation college-bound students and their families. This is an urgent equity issue, and my district has made it a major priority to ensure that every student has the support they need to complete the FAFSA.

Boosting FAFSA completion rates requires us to create a culture that inspires hope and lets students know they’re not alone – that there are adults here to help them through the process. It’s a big undertaking, and you can’t do it alone as a school leader, but you can spearhead a community approach.

Here are the ways my district pushes for FAFSA completion with wraparound supports and outreach, taking a full-community approach.

You can also find resources to help you in these efforts via the National College Attainment Network:

Explore NCAN’s FAFSA Resource Library

6 ways our district works to boost FAFSA completion

1. Train a pool of volunteers to offer one-on-one help with FAFSA completion.

As complex as the FAFSA can feel, the people with whom students engage on a daily basis – staff members, community members or even other students – can assist with a lot, and they refer those with more intricate questions to a higher-level professional, like the school counselor.

Any FAFSA-completion event is going to have a bigger impact with a team of volunteers trained to help people navigate their way through the FAFSA and answer general questions. Invest early in training so you can leverage volunteer support all school year long. Check out resources from NCAN that can support your team with training.

2. Emphasize the amount of money that might be at stake.

Some families don’t even know that the FAFSA exists – or how much support might be available to their students if they fill it out. When we show families the amount of funding that they could be eligible to receive – whether in the form of a loan or a grant – the number tends to catch their attention. When people realize their student might have the opportunity to attend a local college for almost free, they’re more motivated to overcome obstacles to navigating the FAFSA.

3. Carry out awareness campaigns to address myths and fears about the FAFSA.

Even for families that do know about the FAFSA, misinformation can get in the way of completion. Families might worry about exposing their immigration status or financial situations that aren’t sorted out the way they’d like, making the FAFSA feel intimidating – and even risky.

Get the word out, through conversations, letters and social media campaigns, that the information shared in the FAFSA won’t be flagged by the IRS or immigration authorities.

Enlist as many staff members, community partners, parents and students as you can to spread the message that the FAFSA is only used to determine how much money students can afford to pay for college and, therefore, the aid they’re entitled to. Check out NCAN’s tips for communication around the FAFSA.

4. Engage community partners.

When the same messages reach families through multiple channels, they’re likely to engage more. Partner with community organizations around FAFSA completion: local college access networks, Boys and Girls Clubs, PTAs – anyone who is available to support your students. Partners can become trained to assist students, spread information, make computer labs available for FAFSA completion and just serve as additional touchpoints. Explore NCAN resources on engaging partners.

5. Lean on student groups and peer mentors.

When you look around a high school campus, most of the people there are students. How can you draw them into such an important effort? In my district, peer mentoring has transformed postsecondary advising in many ways, and one is in spreading the word about FAFSA. The student “cadets” have a social media division, where they use Instagram and other platforms to get students’ attention and share information.

6. Go where the families go – until you reach everyone.

We try to get as innovative as we can to reach every family. If they don’t come to us, we’re going to them. We are also working on some text-messaging capabilities, and we’re finding our way into their world.

We partnered with a TRiO program that has a mobile unit on buses. We roll the buses into students’ communities, open up shop and go knocking on doors to say, “Hey, come now to the Walmart, or the church parking lot, or just the sidewalk in your neighborhood.” They come onto the bus, and we help them fill out their FAFSA or college application right there.

We go on the radio. We go to community events. We translate everything into Spanish, Portuguese and Haitian Creole, and we hire interpreters for our events. We try to exhaust every opportunity we can, and reach out until we reach everyone.

Explore NCAN’s FAFSA Resource Library

About the Author

Ralph Aiello is director of school counseling at his district in Broward County, FL

MCAN’s Strategies to Engage Students and Facilitate FAFSA Completion During the Summer – or Any Time

Posted on September 2, 2021June 15, 2022 by Bill DeBaun

By Sara Melnick, Deputy Director, National College Attainment Network

As of the writing of this blog post, FAFSA completions among high school seniors are down 4.3% from last year. But some states have found ways to buck this downward trend and engage students during the summer months.

NCAN recently hosted a webinar highlighting some of the innovative strategies states are using to increase their completion rates. The states that presented on this webinar all received funding from NCAN (via the Kresge Foundation) to increase FAFSA completion for the high school graduating class of 2021.

Even though a new school year is upon us, many of the strategies discussed during this webinar are relevant to facilitating FAFSA completion at any point in the school year. And even though the strategies discussed during this webinar were implemented at the state level, almost all are relevant to local and district-level efforts focused on increasing FAFSA completion.

The first presenter on this webinar was Jamie Jacobs, deputy director of the Michigan College Access Network (MCAN). Jamie described a number of FAFSA completion strategies MCAN has been implementing throughout the summer.

FAFSA Deadline Extension

MCAN made policy changes to facilitate FAFSA completion and, ultimately, college enrollment.

Michigan’s state priority FAFSA deadline has historically been March 1. But MCAN knew that, especially this year, students might mistakenly believe that they would not be able to enroll in college if they missed that deadline, even though it is only a priority deadline.

To address this challenge, MCAN worked with the Michigan Department of Treasury – the agency in Michigan that established the state FAFSA deadline – to push the deadline back to May 1 for this year. The choice of May 1 was strategic on the part of MCAN because, in Michigan, May 1 (Decision Day) has for about a decade been associated with the celebration of postsecondary decisions and enrollment. The shift of the priority deadline from March 1 to May 1 had two positive outcomes:

It provided more time to encourage students to complete the FAFSA using, among other strategies, student incentives, competitions, and cash prizes for FAFSA completion.
The narrative around the looming and impending March 1 deadline shifted to be more closely associated with the upbeat and celebratory May 1 Decision Day.

Strategic Outreach

MCAN sent short, attractive, direct-to-students communications via email, social media, and paid advertising focused on FAFSA completion.

The organization also reached out to school staff early in the summer to engage them in getting the word out about FAFSA completion to amplify/reinforce the messages students were receiving directly.

And throughout the state, MCAN is helping to disseminate a clear message to students and families that it’s not too late to enroll in a postsecondary program. The organization has engaged higher ed, K-12, and state-level association partners, such as the Parent Teacher Association, in this messaging since, when this webinar aired, there were still many postsecondary institutions that were still enrolling students.

Additionally, MCAN is encouraging their postsecondary partners across the state to reach out to students who have been admitted to an institution but have not submitted a FAFSA. MCAN is appealing to the desire of these institutions to increase their “yield,” since a student with a completed FAFSA is likely to have a much different – and potentially favorable – financial aid package and might therefore be more likely to attend that institution.

Expanded Summer Advising

MCAN worked with their state community service coalition to deploy summer AmeriCorps VISTA staff to double down on advising to help mitigate summer melt. The major focus of this advising was FAFSA completion.

This strategy was still in its early stages at the time of this webinar but showed much promise, especially around developing and delivering a coordinated summer melt strategy for the first time.

To help get the word out about these advising opportunities, MCAN reached out to partners, such as the state-level associations for superintendents, principals, and others. Essentially, MCAN has become a communication arm of these associations – writing plug-and-play emails and social media posts – so it’s easy for associations to get the word out that these college access services are available.

We are grateful to MCAN for sharing these insights and ideas with us. As we prepare for the release of the new FAFSA on Oct. 1, stay tuned for more tips on how to boost FAFSA completion in your communities.