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Despite high prices, many college students do not re-file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or file late, making college less affordable. Low-cost technological interventions delivering personalized information and/or advising may improve refiling and academic outcomes, but questions remain regarding the efficacy of this approach at scale. This multi-pronged randomized experiment tested informational and framing text message interventions for a national sample of approximately 10,000 undergraduates. The text outreach caused earlier FAFSA re-filing for some students. However, gains in re-filing during the active intervention period were not sustained after the intervention concluded and did not translate into additional federal financial aid or improved postsecondary persistence or attainment. Implications for the scaling and targeting of nudging are discussed.

Informational and behavioral barriers hinder social benefit take-up. We investigate the impact of mitigating these barriers through providing personalized information on benefits application status and application assistance on filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the gateway to college financial aid. Through a multidistrict experiment, we assess the impact of this outreach, delivered via text message. This data-driven strategy improves FAFSA completion and college matriculation and potentially reduces the negative consequences of additional procedural hurdles such as FAFSA income verification, required of approximately one third of filers nationally.

Nearly half of students who enter college do not graduate. The majority of efforts to increase college completion have focused on supporting students before or soon after they enter college, yet many students drop out after making significant progress towards their degree. In this paper, we report results from a multi-year, large-scale experimental intervention conducted across five states and 20 broad-access public colleges and universities to support students who are late in their college career but still at risk of not graduating. The intervention provided these "near-completer" students with personalized text messages that encouraged them to connect with campus-based academic and financial resources, reminded them of upcoming and important deadlines, and invited them to engage (via text) with campus-based advisors. We find little evidence that the message campaign affected academic performance or attainment in either the full sample or within individual higher education systems or student subgroups. The findings suggest low-cost nudge interventions may be insufficient for addressing barriers to completion among students who have made considerable academic progress.

A growing body of research indicates that proactive outreach from high schools and college access organizations about college preparation tasks, and specifically focusing on completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), results in increased college enrollment. Comparatively less attention has been paid to the role of colleges and universities in this outreach and outreach relating to additional financial aid barriers that students face while applying to college, such as the CSS PROFILE form. In this article we investigated, through an inter-university collaboration, the effect of sending targeted, semi-personalized text messages to students during the college application process about important financial aid deadlines, making salient the specific forms required and prompting students to plan specific times to complete these tasks. The intervention increased CSS PROFILE filing by 3.1-4.3 percentage points, where the estimates and their significance varied depending on the comparison group. Impacts on student enrollment did not accompany these filing impacts. Results from our collaboration support the idea that colleges and universities have an important role to play in outreach to applicants relating to important financial aid tasks. The paper includes a discussion of the promises and challenges of this outreach with recommendations for practitioners. [This paper was published in "Journal of Student Financial Aid" (EJ1160087).]

A growing body of research indicates that proactive outreach from high schools and college access organizations about college preparation tasks, and specifically focusing on completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), results in increased college enrollment. Comparatively less attention has been paid to the role of colleges and universities in this outreach and outreach relating to additional financial aid barriers that students face while applying to college, such as the CSS PROFILE form. In this article we investigated, through an inter-university collaboration, the effect of sending targeted, semi-personalized text messages to students during the college application process about important financial aid deadlines, making salient the specific forms required and prompting students to plan specific times to complete these tasks. The intervention increased CSS PROFILE filing by 3.1-4.3 percentage points, where the estimates and their significance varied depending on the comparison group. Impacts on student enrollment did not accompany these filing impacts. Results from our collaboration support the idea that colleges and universities have an important role to play in outreach to applicants relating to important financial aid tasks. The paper includes a discussion of the promises and challenges of this outreach with recommendations for practitioners.

Although socioeconomic disparities in college enrollment have declined, gaps in college completion persist by income and geography. We investigate a text messaging campaign in West Virginia, which addressed informational barriers and behavioral obstacles to college persistence by providing college students with simplified information, encouragement, and access to individualized advising. Using descriptive and matching methods, we find participating students were more likely to remain enrolled throughout their first year of college, and completed more course credits with suggestive evidence of improved academic performance. This evidence suggests colleges play an important role communicating information about academic expectations, support resources, and norms.

Summer melt occurs when students who have been accepted to college and intend to enroll fail to matriculate in college in the fall semester after high school. A high rate of summer melt contributes to the lower postsecondary attainment rates of low-income students, in particular. This article presents qualitative findings from two interventions intended to reduce summer melt among low-income, urban high school graduates who had been accepted to college and indicated their intention to enroll. Results from student and counselor surveys, interviews, and focus groups point to a web of personal and contextual factors that collectively influence students' college preparation behaviors and provide insight into the areas of summer supports from which students like these can benefit. The data fit an ecological perspective, in which personal, institutional, societal, and temporal factors interact to affect students' behaviors and outcomes. A model of summer intervention shows that obstacles in completing college financing and informational tasks can lead college-intending students to re-open the question of where or whether to attend college in the fall after high school graduation. Given the pressure of concerns about how to actualize their offer of admission, students rarely engage in the anticipatory socialization activities that might help them make optimal transitions into college.

Research increasingly points to the importance of parental engagement in children's education. Yet, little research has investigated whether prompting parents to be more involved in college processes improves student outcomes. We investigate experimentally whether providing both students and their parents with personalized outreach about tasks students need to complete to enroll in college leads to improved college enrollment outcomes relative to providing outreach to students only. We utilize text messaging to provide information and advising to students and parents. Across treatment arms, the text outreach increased on-time college enrollment by a statistically significant 3.1 percentage points. Texting both parents and students, however, did not increase the efficacy of the outreach. We situate this result in the broader parental engagement literature.

College affordability continues to be a top concern among prospective students, their families, and policy makers. Prior work has demonstrated that a significant share of prospective students forgo financial aid because they did not complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA); recent federal policy efforts have focused on supporting students and their families to successfully file the FAFSA. Despite the fact that students must refile the FAFSA every year to maintain their aid eligibility, there are many fewer efforts to help college students renew their financial aid each year. While prior research has documented the positive effect of financial aid on persistence, we are not aware of previous studies that have documented the rate at which freshman year financial aid recipients successfully refile the FAFSA, particularly students who are in good academic standing and appear well-poised to succeed in college. The goal of our paper is to address this gap in the literature by documenting the rates and patterns of FAFSA renewal. Using the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, we find that roughly 16% of freshmen Pell Grant recipients in good academic standing do not refile a FAFSA for their sophomore year. Even among Pell Grant recipients in good academic standing who return for sophomore year, nearly 10% do not refile a FAFSA. Consequently, we estimate that these non-refilers are forfeiting $3,550 in federal student aid that they would have received upon successful FAFSA refiling. Failure to refile a FAFSA is strongly associated with students dropping out later in college and not earning a degree within six years. These results suggest that interventions designed to increase FAFSA refiling may be an effective way to improve college persistence for low-income students.

A report released in April 2013 by Benjamin L Castleman of Harvard University and Lindsay C. Page of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University examines the implications of two forms of interventions during the summer between high school and the first year of college on college enrollment. "Summer Nudging: Can Personalized Text Messages and Peer Mentor Outreach Increase College Going Among Low-Income High School Graduates?" details findings that text message reminders and peer mentor outreach programs can be an effective way to mitigate summer attrition. The report details two large-scale randomized trials done in collaboration with three educational agencies: the Dallas Independent School District (Dallas ISD), uAspire (a Boston-based nonprofit organization focused on college affordability), and Mastery Charter Schools (a network of charter schools in the Philadelphia metropolitan area). Castleman and Page reveal the positive impact these low-cost initiatives can have on college enrollment within low-income communities during an increasingly technological era.

Despite decades of policy intervention to increase college entry among low-income students, substantial inequalities in college going by family income remain. Policy makers have largely overlooked the summer after high school as an important time period in students' transition to college. During the post-high school summer, however, students must complete a range of financial and informational tasks prior to college enrollment, yet no longer have access to high school counselors and have not engaged yet with their college community. Moreover, many come from families with little college-going experience. Recent research documents summer attrition rates ranging from 10 to 40 percent among students who had been accepted to college and declared an intention to enroll in college as of high school graduation. Encouragingly, several experimental interventions demonstrate that students' postsecondary plans are quite responsive to additional outreach during the summer months. Questions nonetheless remain about how to maximize the impact and cost effectiveness of summer support. This chapter reports on several randomized trials to investigate the impact of summer counselor outreach and support as well as the potential roles for technology and peer mentoring in mitigating summer attrition and helping students enroll and succeed in college. The authors conclude with implications for policy and practice.

The summer after high school graduation is a largely unexamined stage of college access among underrepresented populations in higher education. Yet two recent studies revealed that anywhere from 10% to 40% of low-income students who have been accepted to college and signaled their intent to enroll reconsider where, and even whether, to matriculate in the months after graduation. This experimental study investigates the effect of providing college counseling to low-income students during the summer. We randomly assigned students at 7 innovative high schools to receive proactive outreach from high school counselors. The treatment focused on addressing financial and information barriers students faced. Results show that providing college counseling to low-income students during the summer months leads to substantial improvements in both the rate and quality of college enrollment. Students in the treatment group were 14 percentage points more likely to enroll immediately in college and 19 percentage points more likely to keep the postsecondary plans they developed during senior year. Policy recommendations include strategies for high schools and/or colleges to provide effective support during the post-high school summer. (Contains 2 tables and 17 footnotes.)