Why Didn’t Students Complete a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)? A Detailed Look

This Statistics in Brief builds on prior NCES publications (Chen, Wu, and Tasoff 2010; Ifill 2016) to provide an updated and detailed look at why students or their parents reported that they did not complete the FAFSA. This report uses data from the 2013 Update of the NCES High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), a nationally representative study of a cohort of students who were ninth-graders in fall 2009. HSLS:09 focuses on understanding students’ trajectories from the beginning of high school into higher education and the workforce.  More info