By Bill DeBaun, Senior Director, Data and Strategic Initiatives
Reading time: Four minutes
Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion data can be powerful for driving students’ FAFSA completion outcomes, but those data must reach the right people in a timely fashion. The University of California (UC) San Diego is pushing
that data directly to high school counselors’ inboxes. It’s a simple, effective, not time-consuming, and practitioner-centered approach.
And here’s the kicker: it didn’t take a major system overhaul or a statewide mandate to make this happen.
“We’re doing this because it’s incredibly important that high schools know how they are doing with FAFSA completion,” says Jim Rawlins, Associate Vice Chancellor of Enrollment Management at UC San Diego. “Many seem to be unsure. If this means they don’t
have the info or time to go look things up on websites, we’re bringing the core information to them instead.”
Sound familiar? It should. Tennessee’s Higher Education Commission has been emailing school- and district-level FAFSA data directly to practitioners for years. The model works because it respects
the reality of schools: they’re busy, under-resourced, and juggling competing priorities. If we want FAFSA completion to remain top of mind, we must meet people where they are, and, even more importantly, not fall into a mindset of “well, the data
are out there, they can find them.” Some will, but many won’t. Being proactive and putting the data right in front of them is key.
You, Yes You, Can Adopt UC San Diego’s Low-Lift, High-Impact Approach
What’s encouraging about UC San Diego’s outreach approach are the low barriers to entry and high possibility of replication by others. The university connected their existing Slate recruitment CRM (a list of high schools to which FAFSA completion data
will be sent) to FAFSA completion data—downloaded directly from the US Department of Education’s public release. Then, using a simple mail merge
and a high school contact list, they push updates to inboxes every few weeks.
“The hardest part was acquiring a crosswalk table between the NCES (National Center for Education Statistics) school IDs used in the FAFSA data file and the six-digit CEEB codes typically used in our other databases,” Rawlins explains. “Once we had that,
it’s just downloading the data and merging it into outbound emails to each high school we had on file. A couple of us worked on the wording and invited feedback from key partners like NCAN along the way.”
Rawlins also surfaces a barrier that deserves attention: counselor contact data. “It’s easy to find lists of counselors at more affluent schools,” he notes, “but the schools where it will likely most help us to reach counseling colleagues don’t tend to
be in those databases.” That’s a gap we, as a field, need to close. Still, this is a classic case of, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” And UC San Diego is crystal clear: they’re not doing this because it’s their job. They’re doing it because
it helps.
A Call to Action for Higher Ed and States
Rawlins offers this advice to other institutions or agencies considering a similar effort:
“Combine efforts—while we’re happy to do this, we’d also be perfectly fine if we saw a state-level partner take it on for us. But if it’s you or nothing in your state, don’t chicken out—it’s easy enough!”
That kind of candid encouragement is exactly what this moment needs. FAFSA completions are up 60% year-over-year, but the FAFSA completion rate for high school seniors is still running a few
percentage points behind pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. Getting back to that level of performance, and pushing beyond it, will take more partners employing more practices like this to share the FAFSA completion data and get it in front of the practitioners
who can use it to drive completion.
Lessons for the Field
If you’re a higher education institution, think about how you’re already communicating with high schools—and how FAFSA completion data could be embedded in those efforts.
If you’re a state agency, take this as a proof point: this work can be done at the institutional level, but your support could increase its scale and consistency and ultimately reach schools and school staff who might not otherwise see this data.
And if you’re a school counselor or district leader in California, don’t be surprised if an email from UC San Diego drops into your inbox with a FAFSA update—and a subtle message: We see you, we’re here to help, and this is how we support students together.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Be more like UC San Diego and email FAFSA updates directly to school staff, we say. Sometimes all it takes is the decision to hit send.
Have questions about FAFSA completion initiatives or want to learn more? Reach out to me, Bill DeBaun, at debaunb@ncan.org!
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