Do the FAFSA presentations serve Davis High seniors?

PHOTO: Number of FAFSAs submitted in the past decade

By Boyeon Choi

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

It was the summer of 2021 and she was new to the United States. Even though she had been born in the U.S., she had lived most of her life up until then in South Korea with her family. Now, she was all alone in a foreign land called Davis, California.

One of the only things in her possession was her dream: to go to a college in the U.S.

Senior Suwan Cowie still is unsure about which college she wants to go to, but one thing is for certain, she plans on attending a school with financial aid. 

Every year, high school seniors and international students are lined up with stress, often worried about ways to pay for their expensive tuition. However, through FAFSA, students are able to put their applications on the official website to be considered for potential income-based grants and also merit-based scholarships. 

Now that there was a new bill passed, California is one of the eight states that require all of its students to submit a FAFSA application, whether or not they opt out. With this new requirement, Davis High staff considered what to do in order to assist the seniors in starting and submitting their applications.

“Near the beginning of the (school) year, we had a meeting with Julie Clayton, myself, the VPs and Principal Geigle,” head counselor Catherine Pereira said. “We wanted to have something that would be informational for the students.”

With this in mind, they decided to host a FAFSA presentation over two weeks during the Wednesday extended time. “It just wasn’t ideal to gather all the seniors in the gym or somewhere and having to spend (a longer) time trying to explain, present everything,” Pereira said. 

For some seniors, the presentation was extremely helpful, guiding them to the beginning steps of their application process for financial aid. 

Senior Javier Zamora was one that believed that they were beneficial. “I wasn’t so sure what to do to start (my application) but now I have a basic idea,” he said. “I’m glad I went.”

However, others viewed it as “impractical and a waste of time.” 

“I know a lot of people put effort into this, but it still didn’t feel that helpful, like I did everything even without going to the presentation,” Cowie said. She was able to start her application without necessarily any help from the counselors. 

But that doesn’t mean that everyone is as confident to start their application by themselves. “I just hope (that) it was helpful,” Pereira said. “It was (planned) in the best interest of our students.”

The simplified and user-friendly website and also the presentation overall helped the majority of seniors and was a good place to go for those who were lost.