Education Department Says 10 Million FAFSA Forms Complete

The U.S. Department of Education announced that more than 10 million Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms for the 2026-27 academic year have been completed and processed this application cycle.

That represents a 17% increase over the number of applications completed at this point during the previous year and a 487% jump compared to two years ago, when the Biden Administration’s botched rollout of a redesigned FAFSA form left millions of families waiting months for processing.

The Department credited the improvement to what it called “the earliest FAFSA launch in history”.

“The Trump Administration continues to deliver historic and timely updates to the form — ensuring that students and families can make informed decisions while applying for financial aid,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a statement.

Updated College Scorecard And Earnings Data

Alongside the FAFSA numbers, the Department announced updates to the College Scorecard — a digital comparison tool that lets students and families evaluate schools based on outcomes like graduation rates, cost, and earnings.

The latest refresh includes new data on what students earn four years after graduation, covering the 2017-18 and 2018-19 completion cohorts.

The Department also improved the Scorecard’s search function, allowing users to compare student outcomes by field of study rather than just by institution. That means a student weighing an engineering degree at one school versus a business degree at another can now see earnings data broken out by program.

The FAFSA’s earnings indicator (a flag that warns students when a school’s graduates earn below a certain threshold) also received a data refresh.

Since the indicator launched in December 2025, roughly 25% of students who saw the low-earnings flag removed that school from their FAFSA and selected a different institution. The Department stressed that the flag is meant to inform, not restrict, student choices.

Here’s what the flag looks like:

FAFSA Improvements: Easier Forms, Less Fraud

The Department highlighted several changes to the FAFSA process itself. A redesigned contributor invite system now lets students share a personalized code with a parent or other contributor, simplifying the process of completing multi-party applications.

On fraud prevention, the Department said it reversed what it characterized as years of neglect, identifying and eliminating fraudulent FAFSA submissions that it claims saved federal taxpayers more than $1 billion last year.

Looking ahead, the upcoming 2027-28 FAFSA form will pre-populate returning students’ data from prior submissions, cutting down the time needed to renew financial aid applications each year.

What This Means For Students And Families

For households in the middle of college planning, the practical takeaway is that the FAFSA process is running closer to its intended timeline. 

The earnings data updates matter too. Families are increasingly asked to weigh the return on investment of a college degree, and having program-level earnings information available during the application process gives students a concrete data point before they commit to thousands of dollars in debt.

The 25% figure on students who changed their school selection after seeing the low-earnings flag is notable. It suggests the transparency tool is influencing real decisions, though it remains to be seen whether those students are choosing higher-earning programs or simply avoiding the flag.

The Department confirmed the 2027-28 FAFSA is on track for an October 1 release, which would mark the second consecutive on-time launch after years of delays.

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