October 1 has come and gone, and the 2023-24 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) cycle is now in full swing. High school class of 2023 seniors are already completing the FAFSA. This class will look to build off of the class of 2022’s positive
momentum and hopefully push our nation’s FAFSA completion rates closer to pre-pandemic levels. The National College Attainment Network's (NCAN) FAFSA Tracker, which is updated weekly with information about completions at the national, state, city, district,
and school levels, returns for the 6th straight year and will remain a valuable resource for practitioners, policymakers, and the public alike.
Although NCAN’s attention is now on the 2023-24 FAFSA cycle, it’s worth recapping recent developments from last cycle. Recall that as of July 1,
the class of 2022 had completed 4.6% more FAFSAs than the class of 2021, good for a national FAFSA completion rate of about 52.1%. In the three months since, the year-over-year change has remained the same, but an additional 5.5% of the senior class
completed a FAFSA, which raised the national ratee to an estimated 57.7%. The FAFSA cycle has a long tail over the summer. Of all of the FAFSA completions through September 30, about 50% occurred before New Year’s Day; just 11% came after July 1.
Low-income high schools, where greater than 50% of students are eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch, and high-people of color high schools, where greater than 40% of students are Black or Hispanic, showed continued strong year-over-year growth at
8.3% and 8.2% respectively. Public high schools in cities saw FAFSA completions climb 6.6% while there suburban, small town, and rural counterparts hovered around 3.5% increases.
The class of 2022’s strong performance was a welcome sight after the classes of 2020 and 2021 finished down 3.7% and 4.8% respectively year-over-year, clearly due in large part of the global pandemic which seems to have affected the class of 2022 somewhat
less. Despite these gains, the class of 2022 finished abut 1.5 percentage points behind the pre-pandemic class of 2019, so there is still some catching up to do.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, Louisiana and Tennessee ranked first and second place by percent of their senior class completing. This is the fifth year these two have occupied those spots. These are the only two states to breach the 70% threshold.
Mississippi put in a typically strong performance and finished third at 69.1%, due in large part to the indefatigable statewide work from NCAN member the Woodward Hines Education Foundation and their Get2College programming.
Similarly unsurprising given where they were as of July 1, Texas (+20.3%) and Alabama (+17.3%) finished tops in year-over-year percent change. These figures are both slight declines from their July 1 heights of about +26% and +25% respectively, but the
Covid-19 pandemic pushed many FAFSA completions back for the class of 2021, so the Texas and Alabama figures are likely more a function of that than anything else. New Mexico (+8%), California (+7.8%), and Maine (+7.2%) rounded out the top five in
year-over-year change.
The aforementioned Texas and Alabama were in the spotlight most of the last cycle because of their first-time implementation of a universal FAFSA policy that made FAFSA completion
a requirement for high school graduation. California’s own requirement goes into effect this year, and it will be interesting to see how much the policy improves on the state’s already slightly-above-average 58% completion rate. NCAN recently dug into the impacts on FAFSA completion from universal FAFSA policy implementations in four states.
Turning back toward the current, 2023-24 cycle, Federal Student Aid has released data on completions through October 7, 2022, and the initial news is encouraging (this link is temporary, and the Tracker will be pushed to its usual home at FormYourFuture.org as soon as possible). This next caveat is in bold, because it’s very important to remember: it’s still only the first week of the cycle. But
through that first week, FAFSA completions nationally are up 25.4%, which will encourage financial aid advocates nationwide.
As for the Tracker itself, the functionality remains largely the same as last year at launch. That said, the NCAN team is tinkering in the lab with adding some additional dashboards and views that will allow users to consider FAFSA completions by Congressional
district, explore changes in enrollment trends, and examine cumulative completions by date in previous cycles.
Inevitably, there will be a few kinks to work out with the new iteration of the Tracker. Notice any weird behavior or see something amiss? I’d surely appreciate it if you dropped me a line at debaunb@ncan.org. Same
goes for any questions, comments, or concerns related to the data or dashboards.
NCAN is excited to make the FAFSA Tracker available to the field again this year, and we are even more excited about the prospect of building on last year’s momentum. Be sure to monitor the NCAN blog for periodic updates about how the cycle is going.
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