This Week in College Admissions

Four shifts every college-bound family should know — June 8, 2026 edition

By Christopher Parsons · Owner & President, College Planning Center

At a Glance

Real-time FAFSA results are live — the Department of Education flipped the switch May 31.
Testing requirements are back for the majority — 52% of Common App applicants submitted scores this year.
17 states are suing the Department of Education over a new individual-level admissions data mandate.
Tuition is rising again — about 2.28% on average at four-year colleges for 2026–27.

It has been a busy week, and not the kind of busy that lets families coast through summer. A handful of developments are quietly rewriting the rules for the 2026–27 cycle — how aid is processed, how applications get read, what schools are required to report. Here are the four that I want every family I work with to understand before Independence Day.

Real-Time FAFSA Results Are Finally Here

Financial Aid FAFSA 2026–27

On May 31, the Department of Education launched real-time FAFSA Submission Summary delivery. If your student signs and submits a 2025–26 or 2026–27 FAFSA — or a correction — the summary now appears immediately, not after the multi-day or multi-week wait families have grown to expect.

That sounds like a small operational tweak. It is not. Most of the FAFSA pain we have all lived through over the last two years has come from delay loops — submit, wait, get rejected for a parent signature or a DRT mismatch, fix, wait again. Real-time results cut that loop down to one sitting.

What this means: If you haven’t filed the 2026–27 FAFSA, file it. And re-run the federal Student Aid Estimator — the SAI formula changed under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, and family farm and small business assets are now excluded. Last year’s number is almost certainly wrong.

“Real-time FAFSA results don’t just save time. They give families a chance to fix problems before those problems become decisions.”

Testing Requirements Tip the Scale

SAT / ACT Admissions Policy

For the first time since 2019–2020, the majority of Common App applicants submitted standardized test scores — about 52%. Harvard, MIT, Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, Caltech, and UT Austin are back to requiring tests. Princeton has confirmed mandatory testing for the Fall 2027 entering class.

And the applicant pools are responding. The University of Pennsylvania’s Early Decision pool dropped roughly 18% after testing returned, while test-optional Notre Dame saw its Restrictive Early Action pool grow 6% to a record 13,711 applicants. Students are voting with their applications.

What this means: Don’t generalize. More than 90% of four-year colleges remain test-optional for 2026–27 — but most of the schools at the top of an ambitious list are not. Build a test plan school-by-school. If your student is capable of a top-quartile score for a target school, invest the prep.

17 States Sue Over a Federal Admissions Data Mandate

Legal & Legislative Higher Ed Policy

A coalition of 17 states — led by Massachusetts and joined by California, New York, Illinois, Virginia, and a dozen others — sued the Department of Education over the new Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS). ACTS would require four-year colleges to report individual-level admissions data, including race, gender, test scores, and financial aid.

A federal court has now granted a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement against members of six higher education associations and six private nonprofit colleges, on top of an earlier injunction covering public colleges in those 17 states. A meaningful share of U.S. four-year institutions is now operating under a paused timeline while the case continues.

What this means: This is the post-Students for Fair Admissions enforcement era taking shape in real time. For families, the practical effect is uncertainty — different schools, different reporting expectations, and rolling court rulings through the fall. Don’t expect cleaner published admissions data this cycle.

“Application inflation, not academic decline, is the single biggest reason admit rates keep falling at selective schools.”

Tuition Keeps Climbing, and Applications Keep Multiplying

Cost Enrollment Trends

Tuition at four-year colleges is projected to rise an average of about 2.28% for AY 2026–27, with two-year institutions running closer to 1.65%. Utah’s public system, for example, just approved an average 2.82% increase. None of these are dramatic on their own, but they compound — especially against any school where merit aid is not yet locked in.

Application volume is climbing faster than tuition. By November 1 of the Class of 2030 cycle, 962,284 first-year applicants had submitted 4,716,352 applications — a 5% increase in applicants and a 10% increase in total apps year over year. Northwestern admitted more than half of its Class of 2030 through early decision. Duke’s early decision admit rate was 13.75%.

A few other shifts worth noting under this same heading: Georgetown is joining the Common Application for the Fall 2026 cycle, which will almost certainly drive application volume up and admit rate down. California’s ban on legacy preferences is now fully in effect, and Stanford and USC are reporting their first cycles with truly legacy-neutral decisions. And selective colleges are paying noticeably closer attention to geographic diversity — students from the Midwest, Mountain West, rural South, and Appalachian communities may carry a quiet advantage as applicant pools have concentrated on the coasts.

What this means: Yesterday’s admit rate does not predict today’s. Keep your target and likely schools genuinely realistic, build a comparison spreadsheet of net price and merit potential, and resist the urge to add ten more reaches to the list. If you’re applying from outside a major coastal metro, lean into your regional story rather than mask it.

What to Do This Week

File or correct the 2026–27 FAFSA and use the new real-time Submission Summary to fix issues the same day.
Re-run the federal Student Aid Estimator with the updated SAI rules — especially if your family owns a farm or small business.
Audit your test plan against the current testing policy at every school on your list (most policies are now updated for 2026–27).
Build a net-price comparison sheet for your top six to eight schools so a 2–3% tuition bump doesn’t catch you off guard.
Set realistic expectations about admit rates with your student — application volume is up another 10%.