More than 1.3 million high school seniors have already completed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) this year, up 2.4 percent from the same time period last year. In D.C. public schools, however, the percentage of students completing a FAFSA is down 6.9 percent from a year ago. (You can download the data for your local high schools here.)

We’ve been tracking this data allContinue Reading »

This spring the U.S. Department of Education has been releasing real-time completion data for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for every high school in the country. I’ve been following the progression in D.C. public schools for the The Quick and the Ed (see the latest installment here). This month, I sat down with Greg Darnieder, a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of EducatiContinue Reading »

Some say I’m a lucky anomaly, but I believe I am the poster child of a faulty college financial aid system. When my mother unexpectedly passed away two months before my third year of college, I knew nothing about how to find the more than $25,000 needed to pay for my next year of school. My lack of knowledge about financial aid was only exacerbated by multiple run-arounds from the Office of FinContinue Reading »

More than half a million high school seniors have already completed a FAFSA this year, up more than 10 percent from the same time period last year. In D.C. public schools, however, the number of students completing a FAFSA is down 3.2 percent from a year ago. (You can download the data for your local high schools here.)

D.C. students are progressing, but they appear to be behind last yeaContinue Reading »

Only about one in eight high school seniors at District of Columbia public schools have completed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) at this stage in the application cycle. These  completion rates suggest that while some District of Columbia high schools are well on their way to getting students financially prepared for college, others haven’t had a single student complete the fContinue Reading »

You can’t get federal student aid unless you fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Research suggests that helping students complete a FAFSA can increase the number of students who receive financial aid, the amount of aid they receive–even the proportion of students who enroll in college. The American Council on Education estimates that nearly one in five low-income studContinue Reading »

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The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) recently uncovered in an audit that 2.1 million taxpayers may have mistakenly claimed the American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC), a tax credit meant to help offset the costs of higher education. The result? Approximately $3.2 billion in erroneous tax creditContinue Reading »

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I am going to be an aunt for the first time. And while my brother and sister-in-law are researching the safest crib, I’m more concerned about whether they have already been thinking about their baby’s higher education. These concerns are probably unwarranted. My brother has a J.D. and my sister-in-law has a bachelor’s, and both havContinue Reading »

Just how much simpler is the new Federal Application for Federal Student Aid? This chart, which is taken from page 49 of the PDF of Federal Student Aid’s fiscal year 2009 report tells a pretty clear story:

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We’ve long known that the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is complex and that this complexity has consequences in college attendance. The 2008 FAFSA, for example, was four times longer than the basic IRS tax form. For many low-information families, this complexity matters. Hundreds of thousands of students eligible for financial aid never fill out the form and research onContinue Reading »