Resource Library

This is a month-by-month checklist for Seniors that outlines the activities of HS Seniors and their parents to get the financial support for postsecondary. This tool may strengthen your existing planning work by making it more transparent to students and their families. How could this help your Seniors get and stay on track?

Postsecondary advising and support is an ongoing process. This 15-month comprehensive calendar will help you  plan ahead and find the best resources to support their college and career readiness work for your high school juniors and seniors. The calendar covers the academic year as well as the summers before and after it. How can this be embedded into your school calendar?

This document provides suggested outreach activities that can help you plan your communications to students and parents about the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) process. It provides information on optimal timing, messaging objectives, target audiences, outreach activities, and resources.

This document provides suggested outreach activities that can help you plan your communications to students and parents about the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) process. It provides information on optimal timing, messaging objectives, target audiences, outreach activities, and resources.

A communication plan template that can help you kick start your effort to help everyone prioritize financial aid for all students.

One of CSAC’s recommended strategies is to set a goal 5% higher than your last year FAFSA/CADAA + GPA completion rate. You can find your district’s completion rate on the Race to Submit Dashboard. Track and monitor data for monthly goal progression using year-to-year comparison. What is a good goal for your school/district?

Check out other success stories and consider documenting your success so others can learn from your work. Start with these questions: what helped you get there? what resources were needed? what advice would you offer a district/school? Start with interviewing a few key people, and share the learning as far and wide as you’re able!

The tool is intended to help you understand and address racial disparities in financial aid completion. This is a crucial step toward ensuring students and families have access to the state and federal grants they need to pay for college. How is your school/district doing when you look at the disaggregated racial subgroups?

Val Verde Unified School District's (VVUSD) policy adding FAFSA/CADAA completion as a graduate requirement. Perhaps it will inspire your district to develop a local policy to ensure all students are completing the FAFSA/CADAA. According to CSAC, 87% of all of their Seniors in the Classes of 2021 and 2022 submitted FAFSA/CADAA compared to 52% of the same years. 

The dashboard from the California Student Aid Commission is a good place to start to develop realistic goals  to increase  FAFSA/CADAA. We  recommend searching for the data of your school or district and seeing the year-to-year changes as a baseline. What are your school/district’s completion numbers?

An Inside Higher Ed article on the impact college affordability has on the ways students perceive their access to college. High school juniors who believe they can’t afford higher education are about 20 percentage points less likely to attend college within the first three years after high school than peers who don’t think affordability is a barrier. How do your students think about the cost of college being a barrier?