Applications for College Financial Aid in Washington Are the Lowest Since 2016

Hannah Furfaro / The Seattle Times

So far this year, only 44% of Washington high school graduates have submitted papers that could help them obtain state or federal college grants. It is the lowest rate since 2016 and 4 percentage points down on last year.

Such a low rate – and so late in the 2021-22 college season – suggests a worrying pattern and could be a harbinger of who will end up in college classrooms this fall and how they will pay for them.

It’s a significant setback as applications close ticked up in the years leading up to the pandemic. Now school and grant leaders are trying to glean lessons from years past that could help students and families get their forms.

What experts say, they’ve found out so far: Students need basic help in understanding the process of financial assistance, and this type of coaching is most effective when done during regular school hours – not at lunch or after school. Encouragement from a trusted adult at school and constant prompts to fill out the forms will also help. And college-linked programs aimed at students of color can result in high graduation rates of financial aid.

All of this has been made difficult during the pandemic.

Experts have also learned another lesson from the pandemic era: Many, many more students are taking what is known as a gap year – a break between high school and college. This could hook up financial aid counselors to help out next school year graduates with help forms, a time they would otherwise be busy helping their newest high school graduates.

“We just need to think (creatively) about how we can keep these relationships alive so students don’t take a year off and then go away,” said Karly Feria, college and career access specialist at Tyee High in highline public schools. Feria said 10 of this year’s graduates are planning to take a gap year and “more than I’ve had in previous years say they need a break because of the pandemic”.

Last March, requests for financial aid stalled and lagged each month of the pandemic, said Sarah Weiss, assistant director of college access and support at the Washington Student Achievement Council, a state agency that tracks financial aid completion rates.

Students still have months to complete the free federal student grant (or FAFSA) application, which can be a tedious task; Families need to locate tax returns, social security numbers, and bank statements. But it could increase or decrease a student’s chances of getting scholarships or grants to pay for school.

The decline bodes badly for a state that has historically had a poor track record of getting students to fill out grant forms. In early June, Washington ranked 47th in a national aid completion ranking. But the low graduation rate isn’t surprising, Weiss and others say, given that students had little to no time with school counselors and financial aid staff. And it’s the same story nationally. At the beginning of June, the number of applications fell by at least 5% compared to the previous year.

State officials have a database that shows school districts where graduation rates are lagging behind and where they are highest. High schools and grant officials have combed this data for the past several years to uncover success stories.

You’re doing it again this year, and you’re doing it seriously. In Seattle, for example, more than 70% of seniors completed forms, just slightly fewer than last year and well above the national average. Students here have an incentive: voters approved an education levy that grants every graduate of Seattle public high schools two years of free community college, but to qualify, they must complete the FAFSA. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, fewer than 20% of seniors have completed the forms in at least eight Washington school districts, such as the Granite Falls and Quillayute Valley school districts.

A new nationwide collection of data adds nuance to the discussion about financial aid. Beginning with the 2020 graduation, officials will also collect demographic information such as the race of the students.

It could take months to get data for the final year 2021. But last year, FAFSA graduation rates nationwide by race were highest among students who are Asian, black, or two or more races. The rates were lowest among Hispanic, Native Hawaiian, and Native American or Alaskan students. White students were close to the national average.

Overall, special education students who do not have special housing under the so-called 504 plans are the least likely to graduate from a FAFSA: only 23% of those 2020 graduates graduated last year, compared to the national average of 52% . Students studying English and those who are not housed are also well below the national average.

The results provide clues to the major barriers preventing families from filling out forms, said Christina Winstead, assistant director of public relations, college access and assistance with the Washington Student Achievement Council. For example, students whose parents do not have legal documents to live in the US may feel like they have few trusted adults to talk to about their family’s legal status, even though students without legal documents about A separate grant form can apply called the Washington State Grant Application. Other students may feel uncomfortable asking their parents about the family’s finances.

The data also indicates practices that are working.

Feria in Highline just found that the new data shows that 77% of black students in Tyee completed the FAFSA forms in their final school year, compared to 56% for all demographics.

She and her colleagues suspect that some factors explain the difference. For one, the YMCA and the College Success Foundation have office space on the Tyee campus. Both organizations provide mentoring and academic support for color students and are run by black staff. These community partnerships mean more adults can keep an eye on students during the school day and track students in the hallways or after school for college plans. As everywhere, however, these interactions could not take place during the pandemic; Tyee’s overall FAFSA graduation rate is currently around 46%, up from nearly 56% at this point last year.

Auliilani De La Cruz, who teaches math and a STEM class for low-income and underrepresented students in grades 10-12 at Mariner High in the Mukilteo School District, offers solutions that may be more scalable. Last year, about 74% of black seniors at Mariner graduated from FAFSA, compared to the school average of 52%.

She adapts her course to her students. If they are interested in medicine, she will organize an excursion into medical professions – for example, she takes them to the University of Washington to meet with medical students and professors as “doctors for a day”.

It helps them answer difficult questions such as: How good are you at your class, how do you pay for college? “We talk about these things a lot,” she said.

This year around 40 students have enrolled in their course; a typical year draws 60 to 90. Any student can enroll, but she works hard to encourage Black, Latin American, Native, and Pacific islanders to consider her class. Each fall, she begins basic discussions about college and grant application deadlines. Then it delves into lessons on the specific types of financial aid students are entitled to.

In the years without a pandemic, she distributes paper copies of the FAFSA forms for her students to follow a guide. She harasses them to make sure they speak to their parent or guardian about financial aid. If a student has a specific question during the class, it will drop them whatever they’re working on so they can focus on completing their grant documents.

“Schools need to find ways to remove these barriers,” she said. “The hope is that in the end they will have their approval notices and know how to pay for them.”

In a normal year, she said, about 75% of her graduates take college seriously and submit their forms on time.

This year that number is around 50%.

source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/applications-for-college-financial-aid-in-washington-are-the-lowest-since-2016/