Sunday night, and my desk lamp is the only light left on in the house. Elizabeth’s asleep, the twins finally stopped arguing over whose turn it was to load the dishwasher, and I’m three tabs deep into admissions news instead of doing what any reasonable person does on a Sunday night, which is nothing at all.
Will wandered in around nine, ACT practice book under his arm, and dropped into the chair across from me with the particular sigh of a sixteen-year-old who just bombed a practice math section. “Dad, what’s even the point of these things?” he asked. Fair question. I’ve spent thirteen years telling families that testing matters less than they think and more than they hope, and some weeks the honest answer keeps changing on me — which, if I’m being straight with you, is most weeks lately.
This week it changed again. So pour some coffee and pull up a chair, parents and students both, because there’s a lot to catch up on.
At a Glance
- Notre Dame is bringing back the SAT/ACT for the Class of 2028 — and it won’t be the last school to do it.
- The 2026-27 FAFSA just launched early, with real changes to how your aid gets calculated.
- U.S. News is adding a new “does this major actually pay off” ranking factor starting September 22.
- A federal judge just let a major Early Decision lawsuit move forward against 32 selective colleges.
Testing Is Making a Comeback
On September 9, Notre Dame announced it’s reinstating the SAT/ACT requirement, starting with students applying for fall 2028 enrollment. Six years of test-optional, and now they’re back to requiring scores — the university says its own data showed scores are one of the most reliable predictors of how a student handles the classroom once they get there. To their credit, they’re also rolling out free SAT prep for students who don’t have access to $200-an-hour tutors, which is the part of this story that doesn’t get the headline but probably should.
Here’s what I told Will at the kitchen table: this isn’t really about Notre Dame. It’s a signal. Dartmouth, Yale, Brown — they’ve already reversed course, and more selective schools will likely follow as application pools keep swelling and admissions offices go looking for anything that helps them sort thousands of nearly identical resumes.
Money Just Got More Complicated
The Department of Education launched the 2026-27 FAFSA earlier than it ever has — which sounds like good news, and mostly is. But the form itself changed underneath it. Last year’s big federal law reshaped how your Student Aid Index gets calculated, took the value of family farms and small businesses out of the asset formula, and tightened who qualifies for what. Pell Grants now require at least half-time enrollment. Grad PLUS loans are closing to new borrowers after July 1.
I’ll be honest with the parents reading this: I made the mistake once, with my own family’s planning, of assuming this year’s numbers would look like last year’s. They didn’t. Don’t make the same assumption with something this important.
Rankings Are About to Measure Something New
U.S. News confirmed its 2027 Best Colleges rankings drop September 22, and for the first time they’ll include an “Earnings by Major” factor — actual post-graduation earnings, broken out by major, not just lumped together for the whole school. It’s replacing an old debt metric that had gone stale. Meanwhile, national undergraduate enrollment climbed for a third straight year, even with a shrinking pool of high school seniors and plenty of public grumbling about whether college is worth it.
Students, I want you to hear this part directly: a ranking is not a verdict on your worth, and it never has been. It’s a data point, same as a test score or a GPA. Useful. Not the whole story.
The Courts Are Getting Involved
A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled on August 7 that an antitrust lawsuit against 32 selective colleges — five of them Ivy League — can move into discovery. The claim: that binding Early Decision agreements have functioned as an arrangement among competing schools not to compete for the same students, driving costs up in the process. Claims against Common App and a college consortium got dismissed; the claims against the colleges themselves did not. Separately, seventeen states are still fighting a federal admissions-data reporting requirement in court, and five states now restrict legacy admissions preferences in some form — though Stanford, notably, walked away from a state aid program rather than give up legacy consideration.
None of this changes anything about how you apply this fall. But if your student is considering Early Decision, this is exactly the moment to understand what “binding” actually means before anyone signs anything.
What to Do This Week
Will, for the record, kept working on that practice test after I closed my laptop. Didn’t say much else about it. Sixteen-year-olds rarely do. But he was still at the table twenty minutes later, and some weeks that’s the whole win right there — not the score, just showing up for the next attempt. That goes for the rest of us too, parents included. We don’t get this process perfect. We just keep showing up for the next round.
Not Sure How Any of This Touches Your Student’s Plan?
That’s exactly what we’re here for. Let’s talk through what this week’s news actually means for your family.
Schedule a Conversation— Chris Parsons, College Planning Center
Carpe diem.
