Texas among five states that require FAFSA
A growing number of states are pushing high school seniors to file the federal financial aid form because evidence suggests that students who complete the form are more likely to attend college.
Five states — Alabama, California, Illinois, Louisiana and Texas — now require high school seniors to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as FAFSA, according to the National College Attainment Network. New Hampshire will join the crowd in the 2023-24 school year, and at least a half dozen other states are considering similar policies. Other states, including Colorado, have taken interim steps to encourage schools to promote the form.
FAFSA completion rates nationally are rising again after dropping during the pandemic but still haven’t returned to pre-2020 levels, said Bill DeBaun, senior director of data and strategic initiatives with the attainment network. About half of high school seniors completed one for the 2021-22 academic year.
A quick review: The FAFSA, administered by the Education Department, collects details about student and family finances and serves as a gateway to grants, scholarships and loans for higher education. Students and their parents file the form when applying to college and resubmit it each year. The latest version, for aid to be awarded for the 2023-24 academic year, became available online on Oct. 1 and uses financial information from 2021.
States have seen significant jumps in the share of students completing the form after adopting mandates, according to the attainment network. Texas, for instance, went to a FAFSA completion rate of nearly 63%, from about 50%, when it adopted the new policy for the 2021-22 school year, the network reported. The state climbed from the middle of the pack for FAFSA completion to a No. 5 ranking.
While the new policies are often referred to as “mandatory FAFSA,” some advocates for students prefer the term “universal” because students can opt out of the requirement by signing a waiver.
But even if students can opt out, such policies help to create a “norm” that seniors are expected to submit a FAFSA, said Perry Wright, senior behavioral researcher at Duke University’s Common Cents Lab, which studies financial decision-making. “By making it the default,” he said, “it’s going to capture a bunch of people it hasn’t captured before.”
Mandatory FAFSA policies, however, place added demands on school college counselors, who are typically stretched thin. Sara Urquidez, executive director of the Academic Success Program, a nonprofit group that provides in-school college counselors to 27 public and charter schools in Texas, said awareness of the need to file a FAFSA had increased. Yet students who could benefit the most are often the hardest to reach, she said, and need more one-on-one counseling to build trust.
Some schools worry that if they don’t increase their FAFSA completion rates, they may be penalized. “It’s a double-edged sword,” Urquidez said.
Because the policies are new and have been adopted in just a few states, it’s too soon to say if they will ultimately increase not just FAFSA completions but also college enrollment, DeBaun said. Some early evidence is encouraging. Reports on Louisiana’s experience estimate that requiring the FAFSA can increase college enrollment rates by 1 to 3 percentage points, he said.
Here are some questions and answers about the FAFSA:
When should I file the FAFSA?
As soon as possible, said Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. States, colleges and scholarship programs also use the FAFSA to award aid and many have early deadlines. You can file the FAFSA for the next academic year until June 30, 2024, but you’ll probably miss out on aid if you wait.
The form is undergoing an overhaul aimed at making it simpler to complete. Congress approved changes such as reducing the number of questions and tweaking the formula used to determine who gets aid, but most updates won’t take effect until the 2024-25 academic year.
Are there new questions on the latest FAFSA?
The law updating the FAFSA requires that the form ask about an applicant’s race or ethnicity and gender, according to a Federal Register notice. The Education Department is including questions on this year’s form as a “pilot” and will use the feedback to write the questions on the 2024-25 form.
The demographic data will be used in “research and analysis of federal student aid applicants and recipients,” the department said in online notices. It isn’t used to determine an applicant’s eligibility for financial aid. Filers who want to skip the questions this year can select “decline to answer.”
Does the government offer a mobile app for filling out the FAFSA?
The Education Department retired its myStudentAid app in June, citing “low use.” But students and families can still fill out the form on phones and tablets, as well as on laptops and desktop computers; the website’s pages “fit the screen size and shape of any device,” the department says.