Bill DeBaun, Senior Director of Data and Strategic Services
Reading time: Seven minutes
The National College Attainment Network (NCAN) estimates that 53.4% of the high school class of 2023 completed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) by June 30, according to data from the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) and NCAN's FAFSA Tracker. The number of completions rose 3.9% year-over-year, building on gains made by the
class of 2022 after two dismal down years induced by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Note: Please bookmark https://www.ncan.org/page/fafsatracker as the new location for NCAN’s FAFSA Tracker, which will migrate away from FormYourFuture.org this summer.
Through about June 30 of last year, NCAN estimated that 52.1% of the class of 2022 had completed a FAFSA. This was a sizable increase over the class of 2021’s 49.9%. The class of 2023’s increase over the class of 2022 was about equal to 2022’s
over 2021. Notably, the class of 2023 did not get back to the pre-pandemic class of 2019’s level of June 30 FAFSA completion (53.8%).
The highest June 30 national FAFSA completion rate was the class of 2018’s 54%, according to NCAN's records, which date back to the class
of 2015.
The very top of the state leaderboard looks very similar to previous years. Tennessee and Louisiana occupy the top two spots for the 6th year running. In four of the previous five cycles, Louisiana had the highest percentage of students completing a FAFSA
by June 30. For the current cycle, Tennessee and Louisiana are deadlocked at 67.3%. Bragging rights will be on the line as seniors continue to complete FAFSAs this summer and beyond.
Interestingly, Washington, DC and Illinois are also tied (62.8%), as are Delaware and Texas (62.4%). Mississippi at 60.3% is the only other state with a FAFSA completion rate above 60%. The rest of the top 10 is also filled with familiar faces in Connecticut,
New York, and Alabama.
The class of 2023’s year-over-year gains were widespread across the country. Just six states saw fewer FAFSA completions this year than last year, and 11 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico saw growth of 5% or greater. Maine set the pace in terms
of year-over-year growth with a whopping 11.6% change. California, in its first year of its All In! for FAFSA/CA Dream Act universal
FAFSA campaign, rose 11.1%. Puerto Rico (+8.4%), Washington state (+7.6%), Washington, DC (+7.3%) rounded out the top five gainers by year-over-year growth.
One way to consider year-over-year growth is by high schools’ demographic and geographic characteristics. Low-income high schools, where more than 50% of students are eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch, and high-minority high schools, where 40%
or greater of students are Black or Latino/a, both saw year-over-year FAFSA completion increases of greater than 5%. This contrasts with higher-income high schools (+3.4%) and low-minority high schools (+2.4%) which saw smaller gains. Some of these
gains are still a likely relic of the pandemic; low-income and high-minority schools saw much steeper FAFSA completion declines for the classes of 2020 and 2021, and so year-over-year many schools in these categories still have considerable room to
grow.
By high school geography, there were more narrow distinctions; among urban, suburban, small town, and rural high schools, FAFSA completion gains ranged from 3.4% to 3.9%.
Worth noting in the state-level estimates above is that they are, indeed, estimates. FSA's high school FAFSA completion data is an excellent resource, but we do not capture all FAFSA completions through using it. For example, FSA suppresses high schools
with fewer than five FAFSA completions, and these do not appear in our estimates. Additionally, student age and first-time FAFSA filing status are proxies for high school senior status in the FSA data. Additionally, we are using projections for the headcount of high school seniors by state. All of this is to urge caution in comparing small differences between
states’ outcomes; a state’s relative position in the ranking of seniors completing and percent change is likely a better indicator of its performance than the absolute estimates of either of those metrics.
Pivoting back to California, the state’s results from implementing universal FAFSA bear further consideration. To put the state’s 11.1% year-over-year growth and fiv percentage point
increase in the percentage of seniors completing in context, consider other universal FAFSA states, as NCAN did in a previous
analysis. In their implementation years, Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama averaged a 25.6% year-over-year increase to FAFSA completion and an 11.9 percentage point increase to the percentage of seniors completing. California got less than half of that
average increase in both metrics out of the class of 2023. It will be interesting to see what increases in California Dream Act applications looked like when the California Student Aid Commission releases their analysis down the line.
As an aside, Illinois, the fourth state with universal FAFSA, is something of an outlier here because its implementation occurred for the class of 2021, which was deeply negatively impacted by the pandemic. Illinois’ FAFSA completions rose 3.1% year-over-year
and the state added about 3.5 percentage points to its FAFSA completion percentage.
One thing that is definitely true is that universal FAFSA frontloaded completions in California. March 2 is the priority financial aid deadline in California. The chart below shows how much greater the year-over-year percent change is ahead of the priority
deadline (indicated by the dark blue line) for the class of 2023, suggesting the change to universal FAFSA in California shifted more seniors to completing earlier in the FAFSA cycle. After the priority deadline, the percent change drops by about
10 percentage points.
California’s implementation of universal FAFSA in terms of how students, families, and practitioners experienced the policy may warrant further consideration to see why the FAFSA completion increases were not as robust as other states’. That said, the
requirement that local education agencies confirm students’ completion of the FAFSA rather than setting FAFSA completion as a high school graduation requirement seems like a distinction without much of a difference. The California Code relevant to the state’s policy reads much like other states’ legislation, for example.
More and more states are considering, passing, and/or implementing universal FAFSA policies. By NCAN’s count, 12 states now have some form of the policy. New Hampshire will be the next to implement during the 2023-24 academic year. Monitoring how states
implement these policies, and how students, families, and practitioners respond to them, is an important part of getting to a successful outcome.
Zooming out back out to the national level, practitioners and advocates should be heartened, but not wholly satisfied, by the class of 2023’s FAFSA completion results. Forward momentum in the form of a 3.9% gain is positive and heading in the right direction,
but history tells us that a high school class can achieve higher rates of completion. After all, more than 40% of seniors did not complete a FAFSA by June 30.
Because the 2024-25 FAFSA cycle will not open on October 1, fans and users of NCAN’s FAFSA Tracker should expect a similarly delayed launch for the platform. For the class of 2024’s FAFSA completion data, expect year-over-year data to sync on the week
number rather than the date. More information about the Better FAFSA, and NCAN’s toolkit about the same, are available at ncan.org. This upcoming FAFSA cycle will be like none other before it, and
NCAN will be there to support the field and monitor and report on completions.
Previous blog posts related to the June 30 FAFSA completion outcomes for the classes of 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 are available at ncan.org. Note that
post hoc data releases in subsequent years may cause slight disparities in the figures reported across years.
Have questions, comments, or concerns about FAFSA completion data or NCAN’s FAFSA Tracker? I’d love to hear from you at debaunb@ncan.org.
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