We are 36 weeks into the 2017-18 FAFSA cycle and 2.04 million high school seniors have completed the form as of June 2, 2017. This is an increase of about 200,000 over last cycle, or about a 10% overall increase:

In this chart, a few important spikes stand out. The first is the holiday bumps we see in November and December, where filing slows down in a couple of weeks and the rebounds after the new year. The second is the March bump, as several states (notably, CA) have filing deadlines. The third is an early April bump that is simply an artifact of the way the Office of Federal Student aid began defining a high school senior. Up to that week, seniors included students no older than 18. Now it includes students no older than 19. This is a good change in the long-run, but ideally we would have 18-year-olds reported for the entire cycle.

With these details in mind, below is a chart showing the same trend but for each individual state (to June 2, 2017):

To put this another way, here’s a map showing the percent change in the two cycles, where Utah grew the most (39% increase) and Rhode Island the least (6% decrease).

Raw data (.xlsx): State Weeks – Oct to June 2