By Bill DeBaun, Senior Director, Data and Strategic Initiatives
Reading time: Three minutes
The 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) cycle, which is notably not over until June 30, 2025, made progress in chipping away at
a significant decline in completions relative to last year. Between May 3 and August 30, class of 2024 seniors completed 555,889 FAFSAs, a 54% increase compared to completions from the class of 2023 in the same period last year. This push halved
the year-over-year FAFSA completion deficit, which went from -20.5% on May 3 to -9.1% on August 30.
Despite gains made late in the 2023-24 academic year and through the summer, that FAFSA completion deficit of 9.1% is large and worrisome. The declines, a result of the well-documented difficulties with timing and functionality in the 2024-25 cycle, have
the 2024’s FAFSA completion rate at 51.4% through the end of August, more than six percentage points behind the class of 2023 through the same date last year.
These data come from the National College Attainment Network's (NCAN) FAFSA Tracker, which tracks FAFSA completion for high school seniors at the national, state, and local levels using
publicly available data from the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA).
According to FSA, FAFSA submissions are down just 2.5% nationally, although this includes renewal applications.
Although the FAFSA completion gap for high school seniors did not close, it did narrow. On June 28, the class of 2024’s FAFSA completion rate trailed the class of 2023 by 7.4%; by August 30, that figure was just 2%. Additionally, the gains this May through
August were much larger than in previous years. NCAN’s FAFSA Tracker data going back through previous cycles illuminates these gains.
It’s clear that as the cycle went on, the high school class of 2024 (the light blue trendline below all the others in both charts) made progress in FAFSA completion. The chart below shows the year-over-year percent change in the number of FAFSAs completed
across the classes of 2018-2024.
Relative to previous years, the period of May through August for the class of 2024 represented significant progress toward FAFSA completion. As noted above, class of 2024 seniors clawed back more than 11% from the year-over-year deficit.
NCAN also has data on state-level gains from the May through August period. The dashboard embedded below shows states’ FAFSA completion rates and year-over-year percent change as of May 3 and August 30 as well as net gains to both measures.
At least three things are true here:
First, it’s true that previous graduating classes had less FAFSA completions from May onward because their completions were frontloaded. The circumstances for the class of 2024 were different, and so, too, was the window and timing of their FAFSA
completion.
Second, and critically, these FAFSA completions late in the academic year and through the summer were not guaranteed to occur at all. It is not (and was not) a fait accompli that students would complete the FAFSA.
Third, we can be disappointed at the persistent FAFSA completion gap as the fall semester commences and celebrate the efforts that connected so many more students with FAFSA completion support and financial aid in recent months.
This past summer represented an unprecedented effort from the whole of the college access field. College access advisors, school counselors, financial aid administrators, and other professionals with a vested interest in students’ postsecondary futures
engaged in an all-hands-on-deck effort to provide students with FAFSA completion supports to connect them with critical financial aid for college.
Two initiatives in particular stand out. First, the US Department of Education's FAFSA Student Support Strategy funded (through ECMC) $50
million in programming across the country at the state and local levels. Second, NCAN’s own #DotheFAFSA campaign was a broad outreach push nationally aimed at 17-20 year-olds. NCAN
has already written about some of the outcomes of the former effort and will have more to say about the latter in the coming
months.
In the meantime, this analysis shows the significant, concerted push made by NCAN members and the broader college access field and the positive outcomes for those students. We are eagerly awaiting data about fall term enrollment to see how many students
successfully matriculated this semester. As always, stay tuned for more from NCAN on all things FAFSA. Have questions or comments about this post? I welcome them at debaunb@ncan.org.
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