Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

            Socioeconomic inequalities in college enrollment and completion have persisted over the past decades, even controlling for students’ academic achievement (Belley & Lochner, 2007; Bound, Lovenheim, & Turner, 2010; Bailey & Dynarski, 2012; Long and Mabel, 2012). Financial aid is one important policy instrument to reduce these inequalities. Yet the complex Free Application for Federal Students Aid (FAFSA) filing process poses significant barriers to students accessing that aid (ACFSA, 2005; Dynarski & Scott-Clayton, 2006; King, 2004; Kofoed, 2013).

            While researchers have designed and evaluated, often through randomized control trials, outreach campaigns focused on providing information about financial aid filing deadlines and processes, to the best of our knowledge, all prior studies focus on outreach from high schools, community non-profits, or government agencies (Bettinger et al., 2012; Castleman and Page, 2015). However, colleges play a central role in financial aid and policymakers have called on colleges to play a more active role in expanding access to lower-income, first-generation students (including a White House Summit in 2014). Our paper provides the first evidence of which we are aware on how a university campaign encouraging students to apply for financial aid before priority deadlines affects whether and when students submit aid forms.

Research Design

            During the 2015 and 2016 application cycles, the University of Virginia (UVA) sent text messages to applicants during the spring of their senior year encouraging students to complete the FAFSA and College Scholarship Service (CSS) PROFILE forms prior UVA’s March 1^st deadline. UVA targeted 80 high schools in the state enrolling a high percentage of low-income students and texted all students from the schools who provided a cell phone number and intended to apply for financial aid. Messages notified students about financial aid deadlines, indicated the significance of completing documents by the deadline, and notified students who had started uploading forms if they were missing any documents.

Empirical Strategy

We employ a difference-in-differences model to isolate the treatment impact of the campaign on whether students file the FAFSA and CSS/PROFILE forms, and whether treated students are more likely to complete these forms before the institution’s deadline. We use propensity score matching and absolute cutoffs (e.g., having at least 40% students FRPL-eligible) to identify several sets of comparison Virginia high schools. We then compare filing outcomes for the students who were eligible for text messaging (provided a phone number and interested in financial aid) in each treated and comparison school to those ineligible for treatment. Finally, we compare how these within-school differences differ between target and comparison schools for our two cohorts.

Preliminary results indicate that students receiving text messages were more likely to submit financial aid paperwork and more likely to submit paperwork before institutional deadlines. Our results are consistent with prior studies examining the effectiveness of college-generated outreach campaigns at impacting student behaviors prior to matriculation (Castleman, Owen, & Page, 2015). Moreover, this work highlights the importance of colleges taking active roles to encourage financial aid filing, especially in providing information about less common forms such as the CSS/PROFILE.