To make their college dreams possible, students and families increasingly depend on financial aid, such as the federal Pell Grant, state-based grants and scholarships, and institutional tuition discounts. Financial aid programs help bridge the gap between families’ means and the sky-high sticker price of college; they are also critical components of elected leaders’ strategies to equip the nation’s workers with skills the economy demands.
But the existence of these programs is meaningless if students do not know about their eligibility. Most aid programs—comprising the vast majority of financial aid dollars—run though the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), a form completed by about 17 million families every year.
As a gateway to financial aid, the FAFSA is incredibly valuable. But as paperwork, it is often a source of frustration. Many families with children in their final year of high school do not complete the FAFSA, leaving billions in grant aid on the table. Consequently, any decline in FAFSA completion can hit aid-dependent families particularly hard in terms of their children’s college attendance, while any increase can deliver them greater promise.
The 2024 FAFSA Setback
The fraught rollout of the 2024–25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) cycle has been well-documented. Through June 30 of this year, FAFSA completions from high school seniors had declined 11.6 percent, which represents about 250,000 fewer seniors completing the FAFSA compared to last year. Through the end of this past September, due in part to significant investment in FAFSA completion initiatives, that gap narrowed to 8.9 percent—a figure that in one year matches the decline in FAFSA completions wrought by two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
These declines in FAFSA completions disproportionately impacted students in lower-income high schools and high schools serving higher proportions of students of color, as well as high schools also disproportionately serving first-generation students. Since the 2024–25 cycle’s delayed opening on December 30, 2023, observers have asked whether the class of 2024 could catch up to its predecessors. But given the particular need for low-income students to access financial aid, they should have also been asking, “Are low-income communities catching up?”
The 2025–26 FAFSA cycle will open on December 1 with expectations and hopes for a smoother experience for students, families, and practitioners. As we await the launch of the next FAFSA, we have a moment to step back and view the long-term picture of demographic trends in FAFSA completion.
Analyzing the numbers for the past eight FAFSA cycles yields surprising results: there has been a gradual but vital improvement in FAFSA completion for high school seniors in the country’s lowest-income communities, compared to national levels. At the same time, concerning trends for middle-income communities warrant examination.
Historical Trends in FAFSA Noncompletion by Income Signal Missed Opportunities
Historically, the groups who are most in need of financial aid have shown the lowest financial aid application rates. For example:
- Research by Ellie Bruecker found that, the higher a school’s percentage of students who participate in Free and Reduced-Price Lunch programs (FRPL) is, the lower its FAFSA completion rate tends to be, with low-FRPL schools showing a FAFSA completion rate of 60.7 percent compared to 51.3 percent for high-FRPL schools.
- The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) similarly found that FAFSA noncompletion is higher for students in the lowest income group (29 percent) compared to middle- and higher-income groups (23 percent and 22 percent, respectively).
- Research by Danielle Lowry for the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) found that, in thirty-seven states, lower-income school districts trail higher-income school districts in FAFSA completion rates.
- Finally, NCAN’s FAFSA Tracker, an interactive dashboard visualizing high school FAFSA completion data from Federal Student Aid, has consistently shown that high schools serving higher proportions of students from low-income backgrounds and students of color have steeper declines in negative FAFSA-completion cycles and shallower gains in positive ones.
Because students from lower-income families are often eligible for the federal Pell Grant and other state and institutional need-based grant aid, not completing the FAFSA represents “money left on the table.” For the high school class of 2023, NCAN estimates that $4 billion in Pell Grants went unclaimed by eligible high school seniors who did not complete the FAFSA.
In recent years, states have elevated FAFSA completion as a policy priority. These efforts include FAFSA completion data-sharing to districts and schools, FAFSA completion competitions among school districts within states, FAFSA completion dashboards, and coordinated statewide communications campaigns—all strategies that appear to be much more prevalent across the country than they were a decade ago.
In terms of specific policy, universal FAFSA legislation, which makes completing the FAFSA a requirement for high school graduation, has been passed or implemented in twelve states and introduced in another thirteen. In Louisiana, these requirements helped low-income communities close a FAFSA completion gap with high-income communities, and states have generally seen substantial increases in overall FAFSA completion rates after implementing the policy.
Beyond universal FAFSA, the expansion of dual enrollment and college promise programs both facilitate paths to enrollment that also have likely knock-on effects to FAFSA completion. Direct admission programs at the state-level (see, for example, Idaho) further remove administrative friction that may keep students from completing the application process. While not directly related to FAFSA completion, these policies work to push students in the same direction within the college access pipeline.
The “FAFSA Curve” Is Slowly Bending
Policies promoting FAFSA completion may be having a gradual yet important impact on FAFSA completion for students who need financial aid the most. While FAFSA completion rates have taken hits in recent years—first during the pandemic, and then with the rollout of the new FAFSA this year—data spanning the past eight years show differences across groups are shifting in ways that signal promise for college access for low-income students.
In this commentary, we focus primarily on the Classes of 2017 and 2023. We use the Class of 2017 because it is the earliest year with available data that also featured the typical application start date of October 1. We use the Class of 2023 because the data from that year demonstrate the curve-bending patterns we are interested in, without the decreased overall rates of the Class of 2024.
Connecting demographic datasets to high school seniors’ FAFSA completion rates helps us compare the long-run trajectory of how different communities’ FAFSA completion rates are changing. It is still broadly true that higher-income communities show higher FAFSA completion rates; however, completion rates for communities with the lowest incomes showed a disproportionately strong rebound after the pandemic, bringing their completion rates to nearly the levels of upper-middle-income communities.
Figure 1
In Figure 1, the Class of 2017’s curve rises in a single direction, moving upward as income increases, and other pre-pandemic years for which public data is available show a similar pattern. But the Class of 2023 is more of a “swoosh”: the FAFSA completion rate of the communities in the bottom-fifth by average household income exceeds the FAFSA completion rates of the next two quintiles. The Class of 2022 shows a similar swoosh shape, as does the Class of 2024, though with fewer completions overall.
Families from the lowest-income backgrounds often have the greatest financial aid eligibility, meaning they stand to gain the most by completing the FAFSA, and consequently lose the most if they do not. Figure 1 shows that these families’ FAFSA 2023 completion rates—even while facing the challenge of recovering from the effects of the pandemic—have returned to about the same level as 2017, while the middle three quintiles declined over the same period.
A similar trend emerges when communities are grouped based on their share of adult residents without a college degree. Communities with the lowest educational attainment levels show an increase in FAFSA completion rates, even when overall completion rates were lower following the pandemic.
Figure 2
The chance for a parent to pass on “college knowledge” makes a difference in all aspects of the transition to higher education, including completing the FAFSA. Figure 2 shows improvements in FAFSA completion for the communities with the greatest share of non-college adults, which likely means that families without college experience are finding assistance with the FAFSA from other sources, such as counselors, nonprofits, or state agencies.
Finally, the data show that the racial and ethnic dynamics of FAFSA completion are shifting somewhat. For the Class of 2017 and other pre-pandemic years, communities with greater shares of residents identifying as Black or Latino saw slightly lower FAFSA completion rates. But as time has gone on, that relationship changed. In the Class of 2023, the opposite was true: communities with greater shares of residents identifying as Black or Latino saw slightly higher FAFSA completion rates. (See Figure 3.)
Figure 3
This trend is partially driven by the fact that two of the largest and most racially diverse states in the country, Texas and California, implemented universal FAFSA laws in 2022 and 2023. But even when we filter out states with an active universal FAFSA policy, we still see that gaps by race have shrunk since 2017, albeit to a smaller degree.
Unpacking the Emergence of a “Missing Middle”
The fact that the lowest-income communities have seen stronger FAFSA completion resiliency in the face of disruptions is an undisputed win—they will need aid the most to attend college, and the FAFSA form is the primary way to get it. But on the other hand, the data also tell a story of middle-income communities tracking downward.
Comparing the Class of 2017 to the Class of 2023, communities in the middle three-fifths by income saw their aggregate FAFSA completion rate fall by 2.1 percentage points, compared to an increase of 1.4 percentage points for high-income communities and no net change for low-income communities after dropping during the pandemic and then rebounding.
Table 1
| FAFSA Completion Rate by Community’s Average Household Income |
|
FAFSA Completion Rate, Class of 2017 |
FAFSA Completion Rate, Class of 2023 |
Percentage Point Change, 2017 to 2023 |
| Top-fifth by income |
58.4% |
59.8% |
+1.4pp |
| Middle three-fifths by income |
53.9% |
51.8% |
–2.1pp |
| Bottom-fifth by income |
52.9% |
52.8% |
–0.1pp |
| Source: Author’s analysis of data from the Federal Student Aid Data Center, reflecting FAFSAs completed by twelfth grade students as of July 31 each year, with data on household income levels from the U.S. Census Bureau. |
Many families in the middle-income bands are too low-resourced to fully pay for college out of pocket, while many are also too high-resourced to qualify for substantial grant aid, such as the maximum Pell Grant. But they may still qualify for some aid, even substantial aid, if only they complete the FAFSA. Policies to increase FAFSA completion are especially important to these families, who may incorrectly believe their net cost to attend college would be too high.
To be sure, lawmakers should continue to pursue higher levels of FAFSA completion in low-income communities. At the same time, they should work to ensure that a “missing middle” does not leave behind moderate-income students who may still qualify for some aid. The same infrastructure that promotes FAFSA completion in low-income communities—workshops and events, early information, and hands-on support, for example—would likely benefit many middle-income families too. Financial aid policy can help too: easy-to-understand affordability guarantees may be especially valuable for middle-income families who otherwise find it difficult to predict their eligibility.
Progress Is a Sign of What’s Possible
The surprising patterns we observe for the lowest-income communities are encouraging, but they are no reason to declare “Mission Accomplished.” Rather, they offer a sign that slow, steady progress is being made to improve awareness of college financing options. The data also warrant further efforts to support FAFSA completion in middle-income communities, who are also at risk of leaving financial aid unclaimed due to non-completion.
No student should pass on higher learning simply because they thought it was out of their financial reach. Despite challenges in the past several years, there are positive signs that communities are helping level the playing field of college access through the FAFSA.
The authors thank Ellie Bruecker and Jacqueline Moreno for their feedback on an early draft of this commentary.
Tags: financial aid, fafsa, college affordability
Despite Challenges, Long-Run FAFSA Trends Show Promise
To make their college dreams possible, students and families increasingly depend on financial aid, such as the federal Pell Grant, state-based grants and scholarships, and institutional tuition discounts. Financial aid programs help bridge the gap between families’ means and the sky-high sticker price of college; they are also critical components of elected leaders’ strategies to equip the nation’s workers with skills the economy demands.
But the existence of these programs is meaningless if students do not know about their eligibility. Most aid programs—comprising the vast majority of financial aid dollars—run though the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), a form completed by about 17 million families every year.
As a gateway to financial aid, the FAFSA is incredibly valuable. But as paperwork, it is often a source of frustration. Many families with children in their final year of high school do not complete the FAFSA, leaving billions in grant aid on the table. Consequently, any decline in FAFSA completion can hit aid-dependent families particularly hard in terms of their children’s college attendance, while any increase can deliver them greater promise.
The 2024 FAFSA Setback
The fraught rollout of the 2024–25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) cycle has been well-documented. Through June 30 of this year, FAFSA completions from high school seniors had declined 11.6 percent, which represents about 250,000 fewer seniors completing the FAFSA compared to last year. Through the end of this past September, due in part to significant investment in FAFSA completion initiatives, that gap narrowed to 8.9 percent—a figure that in one year matches the decline in FAFSA completions wrought by two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
These declines in FAFSA completions disproportionately impacted students in lower-income high schools and high schools serving higher proportions of students of color, as well as high schools also disproportionately serving first-generation students. Since the 2024–25 cycle’s delayed opening on December 30, 2023, observers have asked whether the class of 2024 could catch up to its predecessors. But given the particular need for low-income students to access financial aid, they should have also been asking, “Are low-income communities catching up?”
The 2025–26 FAFSA cycle will open on December 1 with expectations and hopes for a smoother experience for students, families, and practitioners. As we await the launch of the next FAFSA, we have a moment to step back and view the long-term picture of demographic trends in FAFSA completion.
Analyzing the numbers for the past eight FAFSA cycles yields surprising results: there has been a gradual but vital improvement in FAFSA completion for high school seniors in the country’s lowest-income communities, compared to national levels. At the same time, concerning trends for middle-income communities warrant examination.
Historical Trends in FAFSA Noncompletion by Income Signal Missed Opportunities
Historically, the groups who are most in need of financial aid have shown the lowest financial aid application rates. For example:
Because students from lower-income families are often eligible for the federal Pell Grant and other state and institutional need-based grant aid, not completing the FAFSA represents “money left on the table.” For the high school class of 2023, NCAN estimates that $4 billion in Pell Grants went unclaimed by eligible high school seniors who did not complete the FAFSA.
In recent years, states have elevated FAFSA completion as a policy priority. These efforts include FAFSA completion data-sharing to districts and schools, FAFSA completion competitions among school districts within states, FAFSA completion dashboards, and coordinated statewide communications campaigns—all strategies that appear to be much more prevalent across the country than they were a decade ago.
In terms of specific policy, universal FAFSA legislation, which makes completing the FAFSA a requirement for high school graduation, has been passed or implemented in twelve states and introduced in another thirteen. In Louisiana, these requirements helped low-income communities close a FAFSA completion gap with high-income communities, and states have generally seen substantial increases in overall FAFSA completion rates after implementing the policy.
Beyond universal FAFSA, the expansion of dual enrollment and college promise programs both facilitate paths to enrollment that also have likely knock-on effects to FAFSA completion. Direct admission programs at the state-level (see, for example, Idaho) further remove administrative friction that may keep students from completing the application process. While not directly related to FAFSA completion, these policies work to push students in the same direction within the college access pipeline.
The “FAFSA Curve” Is Slowly Bending
Policies promoting FAFSA completion may be having a gradual yet important impact on FAFSA completion for students who need financial aid the most. While FAFSA completion rates have taken hits in recent years—first during the pandemic, and then with the rollout of the new FAFSA this year—data spanning the past eight years show differences across groups are shifting in ways that signal promise for college access for low-income students.
In this commentary, we focus primarily on the Classes of 2017 and 2023. We use the Class of 2017 because it is the earliest year with available data that also featured the typical application start date of October 1. We use the Class of 2023 because the data from that year demonstrate the curve-bending patterns we are interested in, without the decreased overall rates of the Class of 2024.
Connecting demographic datasets to high school seniors’ FAFSA completion rates helps us compare the long-run trajectory of how different communities’ FAFSA completion rates are changing. It is still broadly true that higher-income communities show higher FAFSA completion rates; however, completion rates for communities with the lowest incomes showed a disproportionately strong rebound after the pandemic, bringing their completion rates to nearly the levels of upper-middle-income communities.
Figure 1
In Figure 1, the Class of 2017’s curve rises in a single direction, moving upward as income increases, and other pre-pandemic years for which public data is available show a similar pattern. But the Class of 2023 is more of a “swoosh”: the FAFSA completion rate of the communities in the bottom-fifth by average household income exceeds the FAFSA completion rates of the next two quintiles. The Class of 2022 shows a similar swoosh shape, as does the Class of 2024, though with fewer completions overall.
Families from the lowest-income backgrounds often have the greatest financial aid eligibility, meaning they stand to gain the most by completing the FAFSA, and consequently lose the most if they do not. Figure 1 shows that these families’ FAFSA 2023 completion rates—even while facing the challenge of recovering from the effects of the pandemic—have returned to about the same level as 2017, while the middle three quintiles declined over the same period.
A similar trend emerges when communities are grouped based on their share of adult residents without a college degree. Communities with the lowest educational attainment levels show an increase in FAFSA completion rates, even when overall completion rates were lower following the pandemic.
Figure 2
The chance for a parent to pass on “college knowledge” makes a difference in all aspects of the transition to higher education, including completing the FAFSA. Figure 2 shows improvements in FAFSA completion for the communities with the greatest share of non-college adults, which likely means that families without college experience are finding assistance with the FAFSA from other sources, such as counselors, nonprofits, or state agencies.
Finally, the data show that the racial and ethnic dynamics of FAFSA completion are shifting somewhat. For the Class of 2017 and other pre-pandemic years, communities with greater shares of residents identifying as Black or Latino saw slightly lower FAFSA completion rates. But as time has gone on, that relationship changed. In the Class of 2023, the opposite was true: communities with greater shares of residents identifying as Black or Latino saw slightly higher FAFSA completion rates. (See Figure 3.)
Figure 3
This trend is partially driven by the fact that two of the largest and most racially diverse states in the country, Texas and California, implemented universal FAFSA laws in 2022 and 2023. But even when we filter out states with an active universal FAFSA policy, we still see that gaps by race have shrunk since 2017, albeit to a smaller degree.
Unpacking the Emergence of a “Missing Middle”
The fact that the lowest-income communities have seen stronger FAFSA completion resiliency in the face of disruptions is an undisputed win—they will need aid the most to attend college, and the FAFSA form is the primary way to get it. But on the other hand, the data also tell a story of middle-income communities tracking downward.
Comparing the Class of 2017 to the Class of 2023, communities in the middle three-fifths by income saw their aggregate FAFSA completion rate fall by 2.1 percentage points, compared to an increase of 1.4 percentage points for high-income communities and no net change for low-income communities after dropping during the pandemic and then rebounding.
Table 1
Many families in the middle-income bands are too low-resourced to fully pay for college out of pocket, while many are also too high-resourced to qualify for substantial grant aid, such as the maximum Pell Grant. But they may still qualify for some aid, even substantial aid, if only they complete the FAFSA. Policies to increase FAFSA completion are especially important to these families, who may incorrectly believe their net cost to attend college would be too high.
To be sure, lawmakers should continue to pursue higher levels of FAFSA completion in low-income communities. At the same time, they should work to ensure that a “missing middle” does not leave behind moderate-income students who may still qualify for some aid. The same infrastructure that promotes FAFSA completion in low-income communities—workshops and events, early information, and hands-on support, for example—would likely benefit many middle-income families too. Financial aid policy can help too: easy-to-understand affordability guarantees may be especially valuable for middle-income families who otherwise find it difficult to predict their eligibility.
Progress Is a Sign of What’s Possible
The surprising patterns we observe for the lowest-income communities are encouraging, but they are no reason to declare “Mission Accomplished.” Rather, they offer a sign that slow, steady progress is being made to improve awareness of college financing options. The data also warrant further efforts to support FAFSA completion in middle-income communities, who are also at risk of leaving financial aid unclaimed due to non-completion.
No student should pass on higher learning simply because they thought it was out of their financial reach. Despite challenges in the past several years, there are positive signs that communities are helping level the playing field of college access through the FAFSA.
The authors thank Ellie Bruecker and Jacqueline Moreno for their feedback on an early draft of this commentary.
Tags: financial aid, fafsa, college affordability