New York’s College Goal Sunday Scores Touchdown Helping Twice As Many Students

New York’s College Goal Sunday program recently capped its second year of service with 15 public events held simultaneously at high schools and college campuses across New York State. More than 1,300 students and their families were served by over 300 on-site volunteers, more than double the number served in 2007.

The national College Goal Sunday program objective is to help the highest-need students apply for financial aid. New York’s program is unique in that it focuses completely on providing a Web-based financial aid application service to students and families. At all New York College Goal Sunday sites, students and their families were welcomed by school counselors and college financial aid professionals, given information and assistance concerning financial aid opportunities, and guided through the web-based application process for federal and New York State student aid.

New York students have greater state and federal financial aid opportunities if they use the single, FAFSA/TAP-on-the-Web application process. Therefore, New York’s College Goal Sunday objective is to provide online FAFSA and TAP application services to students in targeted locations that have a history of high financial need and disproportionately small online application rates. In 2008, our second year of operation, our success rate in meeting this objective was nearly 100%.

New York’s College Goal Sunday has achieved national recognition for the effectiveness of its program. The national College Goal Sunday Evaluation Report by the Institute for Higher Education Policy rated New York at or near the top in five categories of achievement: attendance rate for the targeted audience; percentage of attendees identifying the CGS service as valuable; effectiveness in attracting/reaching racial/ethnic minority participants, particularly Hispanic and African American; effectiveness in attracting students/families from the lowest income categories; and effectiveness in attracting “first-in-the-family” students.

New York ‘s College Goal Sunday, funded by a three year grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education, is a collaborative public service project of the New York State Financial Aid Administrators Association, the New York State Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC), and hundreds of volunteer school counselors, college administrators, accounting professionals, teachers, parents, and others.