MOCAN – Missouri College & Career Attainment Network

Increasing equity in college and career for Missouri students

Cherelle Washington

Planning for Better FAFSA

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When the 2024-25 FAFSA opens in December 2023, it will include the greatest changes to the process since 1997. The goal is a more simplified form and process, as well as expanded Pell grant eligibility. MOCAN is working with partners across the country and state to ensure Missouri counselors, advisers, students, and families are prepared for the new form and process.  

Below are just a few of the changes we can expect to see:

  • New format/questions
  • New process – each contributors will need their own Federal Student Aid ID
  • New calculation of what students/families should expect to pay
  • More families will be required to submit financial information on net assets (e.g. farms and small businesses)
  • No benefit for having multiple students in college
  • Delayed opening–expected to open December 2023, not October

Here’s what you can expect to see from MOCAN and it’s partners:

  • Train-the-Trainer: Over a dozen people from across Missouri will participate in a training session with Federal Student Aid (FSA) and National College Attainment Network (NCAN) this July. There will be a well-trained person in each region of the state that will help train others in Missouri through Professional Development Institute workshops and its partners.
  • In-person and virtual training of counselors/advisors: MOCAN’s Professional Development Institute will host FREE in-person and virtual workshops focused specifically on FAFSA completion with our financial aid partners, MASFAP and uAspire.
  • Online Resources for Counselors and Advisors: MOCAN will continue to post content from all of its Professional Development Institutes on the PDI Portal, free for all PDI participants. This will include FAFSA preparation resources from national and state partners.
  • Online Resources for Students and Families: MOCAN will create a single online portal that will include updates and links to Journey to College’s FAFSA Frenzy events and other activities to support FAFSA completion. This portal will also include one-pagers and walkthrough guides.
  • Communications Campaigns: MOCAN will coordinate a communications campaign to incentive early FAFSA completion and fall creation of FSA IDs so students and families are ready when the FAFSA opens.

If you missed our last PDI workshop, Change is Coming: What We Know about the 2024-25 FAFSA, you can view the recording along with presentation materials on the PDI Portal. Use the password Counselors!Rock to access the recording.  

For the latest updates about MOCAN’s events, follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

    Use This High School Graduation To-Do List to Keep Supporting Students

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    Caroline Doglio, National College Attainment Network

    As the school year comes to a close, seniors will be out of the door and moving onto their next step. Each year, an estimated 10-40% of high school seniors with every intention of enrolling in college do not actually matriculate. While NCAN has plenty of resources that can help perform early intervention to prevent summer melt, we also know that every effort counts.

    With that in mind, there are a few final ways that districts, schools, and college access organizations can best support their students during this life transition.

    Senior Exit Survey

    The first step to support seniors is by performing a senior exit survey. This is a simple and effective way to collect the most up-to-date contact information and a student’s next steps in order to tailor support throughout the summer.

    Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research created a Summer Melt Handbook that includes a guide for what questions to include in a senior exit survey. They suggest administering the survey as close to graduation as possible in order to get the most accurate information.

    While it is important to make sure that the senior exit survey fits the needs of your students, there is likely no need to create an entirely new senior exit survey. Consider adapting exit surveys from previous years or using an existing template.

    For exit survey inspiration, visit the NCAN guide to immediate next steps for graduating seniors or see the examples below.

    It’s best to administer the survey electronically to make the most of the results immediately. Once you identify high-attendance institutions to which your students intend to matriculate, you could potentially make a transition cheat sheet.

    Transition Cheat Sheets

    Transition cheat sheets are a quick and easy way to ensure students have accurate information about the next steps at highly attended colleges. The simple one-pager should be full of information on upcoming tasks, deadlines, contact information, and anything else that could help a student throughout the transition.

    NCAN member Puget Sound College and Career Network has created these same cheat sheets for their students, and they serve as a great example. 

    All of their checklists are neatly divided into sections on what to do before coming to campus: 

    • Apply
    • Finish the financial aid process
    • Complete testing or send transcripts
    • Register for orientation
    • Register for classes
    • Find transportation
    • Pay tuition
    • Find supports and community

    Once all this information is compiled, decide how you want to stay in contact with the students. Many organizations find that text messaging is the most effective way to reach young people.

    Reaching Students Over the Summer

    Consider using texting to encourage your graduating seniors to take action over the summer. This is an opportunity to inform students of necessary pre-enrollment tasks that they might not be aware of.

    As your organization is finalizing your plans to support your seniors, don’t forget to take advantage of the resources that are already available to you. Be sure to check out NCAN’s Summer Melt Toolkit and our K-12 Advising Calendar. 

    Award Letters Are Arriving, Do Your Students Understand Them?

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    Bill DeBaun, Senior Director of Data and Strategic Initiatives

    With College Decision Day rapidly approaching, students might need help navigating financial aid offers. These offers, often referred to as award letters, should spark conversations about college affordability between students, families, and the professionals who help them along their postsecondary pathways.

    While financial aid offers foretell an exciting new next educational step, the offers have a reputation for being overwhelming and confusing. New America and uAspire analyzed over 500 financial aid award letters and found that many of the letters used convoluted jargon, omitted the complete cost of attendance, and left students confused about next steps.

    With the right information, understanding and comparing financial aid offers from colleges and universities is a job that students and their families can realistically tackle.

    Award letters all contain the same basic components, they typically include information about types of aid offered and an estimated cost of attendance. With that information, students can find the price they will actually pay, or the “net price.”

    Broadly, there are four types of aid: scholarships, federal and state grants, work-study, and loans.

    • Scholarships do not have to be repaid. Students should pay attention to whether or not scholarships have yearly requirements, such as maintaining a certain GPA. It is also crucial to know if each scholarship is a one-time award or if it is recurring.
    • Federal and state grants also do not have to be repaid. These include grants like the Pell Grant, the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (FSEOG), and state-specific grants. Eligibility is typically determined by the information students submit on their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Students who receive these grants will have to fill out the FAFSA every academic year to maintain their eligibility.

    • Federal work-study is money that the student earns. These funds might be included in the financial aid offer as just another grant, but work-study dollars are actually earned through part-time employment on- or off-campus. The student will have to apply for work-study positions, and work-study aid is not guaranteed from year to year. Read this awesome post from the Department of Education to learn more the 8 things you should know about federal work-study.
    • Loans have to be repaid with interest. They are either subsidized or unsubsidized. For direct subsidized loans, the U.S. Department of Education pays the interest on these loans while the student is in school and for the six months after they leave school. For direct unsubsidized loans, interest begins accumulating while in school, and the student is responsible for this interest.

    When talking to students about loans, stress to them to only take out as much as they need⁠— it’s not necessarily best to take all that is offered. For example, if the student only needs $5,000 for food and housing, but $7,500 is offered, they should only take $5,000. Students may be tempted to have the extra money in college, but they should know that they will eventually have to pay back those loans with interest, which will be far more expensive in the long run.

    The award letter should show the itemized offers for the fall, the spring, and their total for the academic year. Encourage students sure to ask themselves these questions when reviewing offers:

    • Will I automatically receive this aid each year?
    • What are the eligibility requirements to continue receiving recurring awards?
    • When do I have to accept or decline these award offers?
    • If loans are offered, do I want to accept them?

    Once students have added up how much money a college is offering, they should compare that against the included cost of attendance estimate.

    Total Cost of Attendance = Direct Costs + Indirect Costs

    • Direct costs: These are charged to the student by the university and often include tuition, room and board, and fees. This is an estimate of what the student will owe the university.
    • Indirect costs: These are the student’s estimated expenses such as books and supplies, travel, and other personal expenses. Actual year-to-year costs will vary. For instance, the student may choose a less expensive housing option or might have higher travel expenses.

    Once students know the financial aid offers and the costs of attendance, it’s time to find the net price if it was not included already. In New America and uAspire’s study on award letters, only 40% included a net price – the remaining out-of-pocket costs.

    To calculate the net price, subtract the student’s financial aid total from cost of attendance. This is the amount that the student will actually be responsible for. A few ways to close these gaps include paying with savings or taking out additional loans.

    Luckily, there are wonderful resources out there to help students and families crunch the numbers and weigh all of their options. Check out these three free tools:

    If, at the end of their calculations, a student finds that their financial aid is still lacking, they might consider writing a financial aid appeal letter to ask the school to potentially grant more scholarships or loan and grant options. SwiftStudent is a great resource which helps students through this process.

    When deciding where to enroll, the bottom dollar is not the only thing to consider. Encourage students to research potential schools’ graduation and retention rates, along with how their net price stacks up against other students’. The Department of Education’s College Scorecard is a wonderful resource to make those comparisons.

    If students and families feel that they’ve hit a wall, encourage them to reach out to a college’s office of financial aid to get answers.

    Running the numbers, doing the research, and comparing schools is not the most exciting work, but it is well worth the excitement that accompanies the final product: making a decision about the future that students and their families can feel good about.

    Addressing Summer Melt Starts in the Spring

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    Caroline Doglio, Program Associate

    Even though it might feel like summer is far away, for some students summer melt might already be starting. An estimated 10-40% of high school students with the intention to enroll in college never actually do so. This phenomenon disproportionately impacts students of color, first-generation students, and students from low-income backgrounds.

    But why aren’t these students actually matriculating? The reality is that showing up to campus is not only a question of whether or not the student wants to go, but also if they have the resources to do so. Unfortunately, students often stumble when faced with complicated forms and processes.

    Understanding financial aid is often the biggest barrier for students. It’s estimated that 7.2% of students selected for FAFSA verification do not receive subsidized federal as a result, and we know that verification disproportionately impacts Black and Latino students. These burdens add up, making it more difficult for students to enroll.

    The first step to tackling summer melt is understanding how many students it’s impacting and their demographics. A senior exit survey is a great first step to collecting the necessary data. Harvard’s Strategic Data Project Summer Melt Handbook offers resources on increasing completion and what exactly to include in the survey with examples. The guide encourages that questions be specific, like what students’ enrollment plans are and if they have paid their enrollment deposit.

    With the senior exit survey providing an estimate of how many students intended to enroll at graduation, data from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC)’s StudentTracker for High Schools service can provide a count of how many students actually enrolled.

    Though potentially more insightful, identifying groups of students melting at a higher rate than other groups in order to perform targeted outreach. [BD1] Were there specific institutions with higher summer melt rates than others? Is it a race question? An income question? All of the above? Understanding who summer melt is impacting the most is the first step to performing targeted outreach for the years to come.

    But how do we help students right now? And how do we make sure they matriculate after they leave the building? Some practitioners are turning to texting. Text Steps was a project piloted by Ascendum Education Group in 2015 and expanded to 13 school districts in Wisconsin between 2018 and 2020. Some key lessons outlined in the brief include:

    • Successful summer melt interventions require the buy-in of both district and school leadership and frontline staff members
    • Student level-data is key for understanding an intervention’s success – but working with data like this involves a learning curve, so prior planning is required
    • Summer melt will start before summer and interventions should take place year-round

    The school districts involved measured their impact through NSC data, comparing the postsecondary outcomes between the class of 2018 (control group) and the class of 2019 (who received the text messages). The average fall enrollment across the 13 districts increased by 3 percentage points.

    These impacts were felt most by students of color and economically disadvantaged students. In 2018 in participating districts, students of color had a 40% fall in enrollment rate but 65% of students of color participating in Text Steps enrolled in fall 2019. Economically disadvantaged students participating in Text Steps had a 64% enrollment rate compared to a 37% rate for the class of 2018.

    You can learn more about summer melt with NCAN’s toolkit and K-12 calendar.  Have questions about summer melt? We’d love to hear from you! Contact Caroline Doglio ([email protected]) to hear more about approaches to freezing summer melt.

    Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Learn from Other Schools’ Success Stories

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    Bill DeBaun, Senior Director, NCAN

    Before I jump into the rest of this awesome blog post, I’d love for you to save the dates for April 17-21. During this week, NCAN will host at least a webinar a day organized around the idea that everyone in a school has a role to play in students’ college and career readiness. Students’ postsecondary pathways aren’t just a school counselor’s focus, or a teacher’s focus, or a principal’s focus. No, every caring adult in a school, along with external partners, parents, and students themselves has a role to play.

    Our great webinar lineup will examine topics like helping students reach different kinds of college and career pathways, how to build a college and career readiness team, and what kinds of frameworks are useful for understanding what students should know and experience. Interest piqued? We hope so. Full details are coming soon, but giving us your name and email here will make sure we get you more information and an invite ASAP!

    Onto this post’s main business. Lots of districts and schools really want to improve their college and career readiness efforts. You may even be associated with one of them! But it turns out lots of districts and schools can also benefit from help figuring out how to do that. Don’t reinvent the wheel! It feels bad. Instead, borrow someone else’s wheel and make it yours!

    I’ve pulled some blog post from NCAN’s blog that focus on different aspects of college and career advising. These are mostly from a high school context, but some also feature K-12 and community-based partnerships. Have questions? As always, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me at [email protected], and I hope you’ll reach out!

    Still with me? I’m grateful, thanks for reading! As a bonus, here’s three more of my favorite posts:

    Next month we’ll have more information on how to freeze summer melt early. Summer melt starts way before summer starts, so it’s never too early to start thinking about it. In the meantime, I hope this post got some ideas going on different practices districts and schools can adopt to help students be more successful!

    Start Your Year Off Right by Refreshing Your College and Career Toolbox

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    Caroline Doglio, Program Associate, National College Attainment Network

    As January approaches and you consider your new year’s resolutions, here at NCAN we find it to be a great time to reaffirm your commitment to college and career readiness! If you’re lost on where to start, a great jumping off point is our K-12 resources for postsecondary transitions. This page serves as a compilation of resources, some created by NCAN and others not, to help navigate every step of a student’s transition into the postsecondary world. 

    Depending on what you and your district might want to tackle first, there are numerous tools linked on the page. If you’re curious on where your district or school can improve its work around postsecondary advising, OneGoal has rubrics that measures advising on seven different focus areas. Once a district goes through the rubric, identifying places they might want to concentrate on, NCAN’s K-12 calendar can be a great resource to accomplish certain shifts. The calendar is color-coded by topic, such as partnerships, FAFSA, data, summer melt, etc., making it easy to focus on topics that the rubric identifies.

    Another option for tools to focus on could be data! Understanding where students are not only going, but persisting and completing, after high school is key to improving postsecondary outcomes. The National Student Clearinghouse’s StudentTracker for High Schools is an easy, affordable way to start understanding student-level outcomes and identifying patterns. Once you become more comfortable with the tool, NCAN has some resources on how to level up the work you do with it.

    The final tool linked on the page is an NCAN brief that examines five school districts and partner organizations using big ideas to improve their students’ postsecondary outcomes and how other districts could replicate these practices to achieve similar outcomes.

    On top of these tools, there are additional pages linking to plenty of resources on various topics. There’s a page on transforming postsecondary advising, which allows you to explore strategies for connecting students and families to information they need. Another page provides more information on how to use data to educate students and inform services. There’s a FAFSA specific page to learn about best practices that have worked across the country. And finally, a whole page on strategies for reducing summer melt, which, by the way, starts way before summer.

    The new year provides a chance to re-orient yourself and your goals and what is a better goal than easing postsecondary transitions!

    Have questions or looking for a specific resource not covered by the above? I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me at [email protected]!