In the first three months of the current (2018-19) FAFSA filing cycle, 1.275 million high school seniors completed the form. This is a 6% increase from last year, as shown in the chart below.

We monitored these weekly trends last year and found about 2.1 million high school seniors filed by the end of the school year. So within just the first three months of the new cycle, we are over half-way to last year’s filing levels.

These trends hold pretty steady across the states, where all but five (MT, OR, VT, WV, WY) are outpacing last year’s figures each week.

Several states are making really strong progress on high school FAFSA completions over last year’s cycle. Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Washington, DC, stand out as having some of the highest growth rates over last year.

We will continue monitoring these trends, especially in early spring when some state aid programs have filing deadlines.

Below is an excel file behind these charts, listing the weekly number of completions for the two cycles, by each state.

State high school FAFSA completions (.xlsx): state_hs_fafsa_week_13