At a Glance
- A federal judge blocked the Education Department’s expanded admissions-data demand for 170+ more colleges.
- FAFSA completion for the class of 2026 hit a record 54.7% — with weeks still on the clock.
- Pell Grant eligibility tightens and the Grad PLUS Loan ends July 1.
- Test submission has officially flipped — more applicants are sending scores than withholding them.
Some weeks in admissions, the news is mostly noise. This was not one of them. Four real shifts landed in the past seven days — one legal, one financial, one structural, and one cultural — and each of them changes something specific about how you should plan the next few months. Here’s the short version, with the “what this means for your family” spelled out underneath each one.
A court just slowed down the federal admissions-data fight
In April, a federal judge in Boston granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Education Department from enforcing its expanded IPEDS race-and-sex admissions-data mandate against more than 170 additional private colleges. The ruling extends an earlier pause that already covered public colleges in the 17 states that sued back in March.
What’s going on: after the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, the federal government issued a memo and a new data demand requiring colleges to retroactively report seven years of disaggregated admissions data. Seventeen state attorneys general sued, arguing the rule was rushed, vague, and a privacy risk. A judge agreed, at least for now.
For most families, this is background noise — but it tells you something important: the post-affirmative-action rulebook is still being written, in court, in real time. Don’t expect application questions and reporting rules to be settled for the 2026-27 cycle. Watch the Common App when it opens August 1.
“The post-affirmative-action rulebook is still being written. Don’t plan on it being settled before your student hits submit.”
FAFSA just had its best year on record
After two punishing years of rollout problems, the FAFSA finally caught a break. The National College Attainment Network reported in early May that 54.7% of high school seniors had completed the form by May 1 — an all-time record, set nearly two months before the June 30 deadline. Several states are on pace to clear 60% before the month is out.
The credit goes to four things: an earlier September launch, faster backend processing, the spread of state laws that make FAFSA completion a graduation requirement (now in nine states), and a new instant-verification feature that lets most applicants finish the form in minutes instead of waiting days.
If you’ve been waiting to file because you heard horror stories, the waiting is over. Rising seniors: plan to file in the first two weeks of October when the next cycle opens. And don’t skip it because you assume you won’t qualify — institutional aid, state aid, and a lot of merit money still runs through the FAFSA.
Pell Grant tightens, Grad PLUS ends, and tuition keeps creeping
The maximum Pell Grant award holds at $7,395 for 2026-27, but the eligibility rules narrowed. Families with significant assets — and students whose non-federal grants and scholarships already cover the full cost of attendance — are no longer Pell-eligible. Starting July 1, 2026, the Direct PLUS Loan for graduate and professional students is also eliminated, replaced with new unsubsidized Federal Direct Stafford limits.
On the sticker-price side, the University of Rochester announced a 3.9% tuition increase to $71,750 and a 4.2% increase in housing and food for 2026-27, putting it in the middle of the pack for selective privates this cycle. The University of Utah, meanwhile, lowered its merit GPA requirement to 3.5 and consolidated all university awards under one application.
Two practical moves: (1) high-asset families who used to get a small Pell award shouldn’t budget for it anymore, and (2) students considering grad school in expensive fields like law, medicine, or a PhD need to factor the new borrowing math into their undergraduate price tag, not just their grad-school one.
“Sticker price is the easiest number to fixate on, and the least useful one. Net price is what your family actually pays.”
Testing has officially flipped — and CS makes the rest of the rate look easy
For the first time since 2019-2020, more applicants reported standardized test scores on the Common App than withheld them — 52% submitted. Nine of the twelve Ivy Plus schools have now reinstated test requirements: MIT, Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard, Brown, Penn, Princeton, Cornell, and Stanford. Most other selective colleges remain test-optional on paper, but submission rates in early pools are climbing fast.
At the same time, the headline acceptance rates kept marching downward. Harvard and Caltech sat at roughly 3%, Stanford at 3.7%, MIT just above 4%. And there’s a wrinkle families need to understand: at most elite universities, admit rates for computer science and engineering are now 50%-75% lower than the institution-wide rate. A “7% school” can be a 3% school if your student is applying as a CS major.
Test-optional language is increasingly misleading at the top of the market — rising seniors should plan summer testing as if a strong score will be expected. And building a sensible college list now requires major-level realism, not just school-level realism.
What to Do This Week
Want a clearer plan for your family?
A 45-minute conversation will tell us a lot more than a 1,500-word article ever will.
Book a Consultation— Chris Parsons, College Planning Center
