Real-Time FAFSA Results Are Finally Here

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.

Testing Requirements Tip the Scale

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.

17 States Sue Over a Federal Admissions Data Mandate

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.

Tuition Keeps Climbing, and Applications Keep Multiplying

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.