High Value Incentive Boosts School FAFSA Rate

Late last year, Cleveland High School Counselor Amanda Pardue came up with a novel idea to get her seniors to fill out the FAFSA: incentives.

Using a grant she received through Johnston County Schools, she dangled a carrot.

Pardue encouraged students to post a flier on their social media and fill out their financial aid form for a chance to win a pair of AirPods Max, which currently retail for around $480.

“I was just trying to think of things that would get the most traction,” she said.

Instagram post from Cleveland High School counselors page. 

“I didn’t want it to be something you could just go to the store and buy yourself. I wanted it to be really impactful. And at that price point and the popularity of AirPods Max among teenagers, I knew this would be a popular want.”

And it worked.

“We had students walking into the building and saying, ‘Did you do your FAFSA yet?’” she said.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the gateway to scholarships, grants, and loans at the federal, state and college level for prospective students. Once students and their parents fill one out, they can see all the options they’re eligible for . But not all families know about or understand FAFSA . That’s why the previous FAFSA completion rate at Cleveland High School hovered around 20 percent. After the contest, the school’s rate climbed above 30 percent, according to Pardue.

Seventeen-year-old Senior Carlie McFalls was the first one to enter the contest and, ultimately, she won the AirPods.

She was sitting in her chemistry class when she first got an email about the giveaway. She raised her hand and asked her teacher if she could go to the school office. She had already completed her FAFSA, so she went and showed Pardue the proof.

“She was like, ‘OK, you’re entered,’” McFalls said. She posted the flier to her Instagram feed and immediately started getting responses from other classmates.

“A lot of people I didn’t even know were texting me from Instagram and asking me about it,” she said.

They wanted to know how to complete the FAFSA and prove it so they could be entered in the contest, too. McFalls said she wasn’t a lot of help. Her mom helped her fill her FAFSA out. Fortunately, the school had counselors like Pardue who could help the other students fill in the blanks.

The day McFalls found out she’d won the AirPods, she was driving to Dunkin’ Donuts.

“I saw an email pop up when I was at a stop light, and I just saw ‘Congratulations, you have won,’” she said. “I immediately stopped going to Dunkin’ Donuts and went to school.”

Cleveland High student Carlie McFalls with her new AirPods Max. Photo courtesy of Cleveland High School counselors’ Instagram page. 

Pardue said the contest was helpful because her school doesn’t have a dedicated college advisor or the money to fund any extra positions. The school has five counselors for about 2,000 students.

“We just don’t have resources to sit with every senior to help them complete their FAFSA, which is another reason that we have to think creatively,” she said.

In fact, looking at College For North Carolina’s FAFSA Tracker, you can see just what kind of impact the contest had.

Pardue started the contest before Christmas. The flier was first posted to the school counselors’ Instagram on Dec. 2.

The image below graphs Cleveland High School’s FAFSA completion rate for this year. The line graph starts on the far left at Dec. 6, 2024. At that point, the year’s FAFSA completion rate for Cleveland High School was 10.7 percent.

The dark circle on the line graph marks Jan. 10, 2025, two days after the close of the contest. The completion rate at that point was 28.1 percent. And completion continues to go up through Jan. 31st - marked with the final number on the right – where the school ultimately reached a 34 percent completion rate. That’s a 23.3 percentage point increase from start to finish. Meanwhile, during the same period, the Johnston County School System as a whole only went up 17.4 percentage points.

Neftali Cabrales-Vick, manager of College Access and FAFSA Outreach at the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority, said it’s important for counselors to think of innovative ways to incentivize FAFSA completion. And when peers hear about how to access financial aid from other peers, the message often resonates more deeply.

“Unfortunately, talking about financial aid isn’t the most exciting thing,” she said. “So, I love the idea of getting students engaged.”

She said completing the FAFSA is a key step in getting students access to funds to help pay for college. And a lack of awareness about financial aid among students can often hamstring them, leading them to count themselves out for higher education because they think they can’t afford it.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, Cabrales-Vick said. There are resources available at the federal, state, and college level that help make paying for college more manageable. And if students fill out the FAFSA, they might just see how possible it is.

“It gives them hope,” she said. “Like, ‘Hey, you can actually do this.’”