News Update

National financial aid applications from high schoolers increase

As of July 1, national high school financial aid application completions are up 4.6% from last year, representing about 92,000 additional applications according to a report released earlier this month by the National College Attainment Network, or NCAN.

The nonprofit research organization found only 11 states had fewer completions of the Federal Application for Free Student Aid, or FAFSA this year. Other states like New Mexico and Mississippi saw gains, including California with a 6.6% increase this year compared with last year. However, Texas and Alabama saw significant increases in application completions after those states started universal FAFSA policies for the first time this academic year. The Texas completion rate increased by nearly 26%, and Alabama by about 25%.

The coronavirus pandemic caused FAFSA application completion rates to drop over the past two years, but FAFSA estimates that about 52.1% of the Class of 2022 completed the application, short of the Class of 2019 by only 1.7%.

The data is from NCAN’s Form Your Future FAFSA Tracker, which tracks competition data and is updated weekly with national, state, city, district and school level information.


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