In 2015 the White House made anannouncementthat some enrollment experts predicted could transform the college-admissions process. Soon, students would be able to file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid earlier and using older tax information.
The move was widely seen as an improvement for students, most of whom must factor affordability into their college choice. Traditionally, bottom-line prices at specific colleges were not available until a few weeks before students had to make up their minds. But with an earlier financial-aid process, colleges could provide that information sooner. And that, experts agreed, would enable students to make more careful decisions, reducing the chances that they would borrow too much or drop out.
The change, some argued, could have much larger implications for how colleges operate. “Those who have been clamoring for disruption in higher education,” one enrollment leaderwroteinThe Chronicle, “may not be aware that it has just arrived.”
Has it? Midway through the first admissions cycle since the Fafsa changes took effect, it’s still too soon to say, though many people are looking for signs. Admissions deans are capitalizing on the new timing — and sweating a cycle that’s especially difficult to predict. And advocacy groups are worried that when the dust settles, the early Fafsa will be one more effort to help low-income students that ends up mostly benefiting more-affluent ones.
How the Process Has Changed
The changes might not sound like such a big deal to a casual observer. They’re often referred to as “prior-prior year” or the “early Fafsa,” jargony terms exciting only to a small cadre of college-affordability experts and policy wonks. In case you’re not part of that group and need a refresher, the financial-aid process has changed in two important ways.
First, applicants can fill out the Fafsa using older financial information, from an earlier year’s taxes. Instead of using data from the year before, they can pull in figures from the “prior-prior year.”
In the past, students were encouraged to apply for aid using information from the prior year as soon as possible after the form went live, in January. But many families do not file their taxes representing that year until closer to when they’re due, in April. A family that wanted to apply for aid before completing its taxes could do so using estimated figures, but would have to revise them later.
But most families will have filed their taxes from the prior-prior year. That in turn lets more of them use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool, which allows them to easily transfer their tax information into the financial-aid form. In short, the process should be easier for families and result in more-accurate information on applications. Prior-prior year has long been understood as a move that would help low-income students in particular — some students who would qualify for federal Pell Grants never apply for aid, and the form’s complexity is onereason.
The second shift concerns timing. Since they are using older tax data, applicants would be ready to file before the Fafsa traditionally became available, on January 1. Now the form opens in October.
While many student advocates were excited about the idea of using older tax data, few had thought through the implications that moving up the financial-aid timeline would have for colleges.
What do we know about how things are playing out so far? According to the Education Department, more than five million Fafsa applications had been processed by December 30. Applications are down significantly compared with the first three months of previous cycles: About eight million applications are typically filed in the first quarter, according to the department.
The department points to several explanations. First, applicants have a longer timeline in which to file this year. And second, many of the deadlines for state grant aid — which can lead to spikes in filing — haven’t hit yet. As a result, the department expects the numbers to keep going up in February and March.
About half of this cycle’s aid applicants are eligible for federal Pell Grants, which go to low-income students, according to the department. That percentage is similar to those of previous years.
Nicholas Hillman, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has been following the situation closely. Each week the Education Department releases new high-school-level data on Fafsa filing.
The data are imperfect, capturing only high-schoolers age 18 or younger at schools that meet a certain threshold of filers, and not returning or adult students. But they provide the best real-time gauge of how the change is playing out nationally.
Back in November, overall filing among high-schoolers was running ahead of where it was the same number of weeks after the form became available the previous cycle. But as of December 30, Fafsa completions among this group were down 20 percent compared with last cycle, Mr. Hillman says. “Maybe it’s not a problem, because we’re going to get there,” says Mr. Hillman, who believes filing will tick upward in the late winter and spring. But he’s not confident that more students will ultimately apply for aid this year than in past ones. Perhaps, Mr. Hillman says, the early Fafsa is like early voting: shifting the timing of the process increases early participation, but not overall participation.
Carrie Warick, director of policy and advocacy at the National College Access Network, thinks that the number of filers will catch up. “I am not worried,” she says, “because we know students are motivated by deadlines, just like adults are.”
A Spike, Then a Dip
Many college officials were in favor of the Fafsa changes, believing they would help students. But some worried about what the modifications might mean for their institutions. Among the possibilities: With the chance to learn what they would pay sooner, students might apply to fewer colleges. That could reverse a longstanding trend of ever-increasing application numbers at many colleges, which could make it even harder to predict yield, the percentage of admitted students who enroll.
Colleges’ preparation for the early Fafsa variedwidely.Asurveyof colleges conducted in November by Royall and Company, a division of the consulting firm EAB, found an early surge in Fafsa filing. The survey also found that colleges that worked to get ahead of the change are seeing their efforts pay off, says Pamela Kiecker Royall, head of research.
Ms. Royall has also heard anecdotally that a number of colleges saw a spike in admissions applications in the early fall, but then a slowdown in November and December. That could mean, she says, that students are applying to fewer colleges at first and seeing what happens before deciding whether to apply elsewhere.
The University of Denver decided to get ahead of the changes. It set tuition in September instead of January so that it could issue earlier financial-aid awards. While Tom Willoughby, vice chancellor for enrollment, has heard of the application pattern Ms. Royall described, that hasn’t been Denver’s experience. Instead, the university has been slightly behind in admissions applications all cycle, though the gap has narrowed over time, he says. He does think a possible explanation is that students are simply applying to fewer colleges upfront.
Though applications are down, Denver has still been able to admit the same number and quality of students to its early programs, Mr. Willoughby says.
By January 4, Denver had received 5,750 Fafsas for new students, compared with 4,690 by the start of February last year. “Families really are taking advantage of the opportunity of these forms being available earlier,” he says.
Mr. Willoughby has noticed another anticipated change: Families are trying to negotiate for more aid earlier, too. Even students who applied early decision are asking for more money, Mr. Willoughby says, and that often means more merit aid, since few of them have financial need. Denver generally will not adjust applicants’ aid unless their financial or academic situation changes.
Millsaps College, in Mississippi, also moved its process up, but hasn’t noticed an increase in negotiations, says Robert Alexander, vice president for enrollment and communications. He suspects that many students haven’t received aid offers from other colleges yet, leaving them without a point of comparison. The college’s main competitors are public institutions, whose dependence on state funding makes it harder to shift their timelines.
Giving students earlier aid awards could improve yield, Mr. Alexander says, but determining whether or not it does would be tricky since that measure is influenced by so many things. Where he hopes to really see the benefit is in the degree of melt, when students pay deposits but never show up on the campus.
Last year, Mr. Alexander noticed, a high percentage of students who deposited early ended up melting, perhaps because they’d committed to the college out of emotion, without thinking it all the way through. The earlier aid information Millsaps provided this time, he believes, could mitigate that.
North Central College, in Illinois, has had a relatively normal admissions cycle, despite moving its process up, says Marty Sauer, vice president for enrollment management and athletics. But he is worried about what might happen with transfer students — a significant piece of the college’s enrollment. North Central typically takes about 600 freshmen and 250 transfers for the fall, he says, and an additional 75 or so transfer students starting in January.
At the root of Mr. Sauer’s concern is the state’s Monetary Award Program, or MAP, which has limited funding and operates on a first-come, first-served basis. This cycle, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, which runs MAP, stopped making estimated awards on December 22, believing it had run out of money.
Incoming students from community colleges might not even have decided to transfer by that point in the year, Mr. Sauer says, and could miss out on that financial aid as a result.
For now, the college is running about 20 percent ahead in deposits, Mr. Sauer says, though he expects this is an early surge that will level off over time. Making comparisons to previous cycles is tough. “This was a year where we had to make a lot of decisions with intuition,” he says. Next year, colleges will have good comparative data again.
‘Stealth Fafsa Filers’
At some colleges, the new timeline has changed just about everything the admissions office does. Like communicating with accepted applicants. Drake University, in Iowa, started sending aid packages to students in early December — just after its early-action deadline passed — about three months earlier than last year. In follow-up calls to those students, admissions officers now wear two hats — celebrating an applicant’s acceptance while also inviting questions about his or her aid offer. “We’re trying to figure out how to balance this convergence,” says Anne E. Kremer, dean of admission. “How to say, ‘Congratulations,’ to live in that moment, and then say, ‘OK, let’s talk about money.’”
With more time to connect with admitted applicants, many colleges are adding programming that might keep them engaged. Recently, Drake hosted a Facebook Live conversation on understanding aid packages. The university is considering other ways of connecting with prospective students over the three-plus months leading up to the May 1 deposit deadline. “There’s more opportunity for the wooing,” Ms. Kremer says. “But how much more wooing can you do? Do families want that? How do you know?”
Admissions offices everywhere have long contended with “stealth applicants,” students who have no contact with a college before applying. Now, because of the new federal-aid timeline, colleges are seeing “stealth Fafsa filers,” whose aid forms arrive, seemingly out of the blue, from those who have yet to apply.
At one point this fall, Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh had received Fafsas from about 500 high-school seniors who had never contacted the institution — and about 500 more from others who had inquired but not applied. Converting such students into applicants requires a new communication stream. “In some cases, the very first marketing message going out to a student is from the financial-aid office, letting them know they need to apply,” says Wendy Beckemeyer, vice president for enrollment management.
Robert Morris has revamped its operations to get aid awards out much earlier than before. Last year the institution opened its admission application in June instead of October. Officials moved up the tuition-setting process by six months, to this past September. That allowed the financial-aid office to start packaging before Halloween. And mailings emphasizing the value of attending the university — such as information on graduates’ job outcomes and earnings — that previously went out in February or March were scheduled for expedited deliveries.
“We saw it as a best practice to be nimble,” Ms. Beckemeyer says.
Florida International University plans to send aid packages to applicants within the next week or so, about a month earlier than last year. “Our thinking was there is nothing to lose, everything to gain,” says Jody Glassman, director of undergraduate admissions. “Pushing the financial part of the search process a lot earlier can help us alleviate stress later.”
That’s an especially important concern on campuses that serve many lower-income applicants. About two-thirds of students at Florida International are Hispanic, more than half are the first in their families to attend college, and many receive Pell Grants. “Their parents have a lot of questions,” Ms. Glassman says. “This way we can address questions before it becomes too late.”
Although applicants often get all the attention, the new calendar, of course, also affects aid recipients who are already enrolled. Recently, Florida International created a marketing campaign (“FAFSA + OCTOBER = DINERO”) that encourages early filing among returning students. “We want to keep them going and graduate in four years,” Ms. Glassman says. “We don’t want them to get stuck because they missed a deadline.”
To explain the change, the university has mailed postcards, distributed T-shirts, and advertised the campaign on coffee-cup sleeves and napkin holders in cafeterias. The push seems to be working: Twenty-eight percent more returning students filed a Fafsa between October 1 and November 15 this past fall than between January 1 and February 15 last year.
And prospective students are getting the message, too. Two months after the Fafsa opened, filing among applicants is up 5 percent over the same interval last year.
Though it’s too early to gauge all the effects of the policy changes, one thing is already clear: Financial aid is now much more entwined with the admissions process than it used to be — and that’s changing the nature of admissions work.
“It’s not just shifting a systematic process,” Ms. Glassman says. “It’s changing a culture.”
