Last Thursday, May 1, marked Decision Day for many colleges across the country. In some ways, 2025 brings good news in the postsecondary arena; for the first time since the pandemic, postsecondary enrollment returned to pre-Covid levels and next fall colleges may welcome the largest-ever class of first-year students.

This evidence of strong interest in college matches what CARA is seeing at our partner schools. As of April 1, the average FAFSA completion rate across our partner schools is 54.6%, higher than the national average (43.2%) and New York state’s rate (49.6%), and over 20 percentage points higher than last year, when rates were down because of the FAFSA fiasco. College applications have also gone up, with the proportion of students applying to CUNY, SUNY, and private schools by Jan 1 climbing 11, 7 and 8 percentage points respectively from 2022 to today.

At the same time, as students have been completing financial aid applications and beginning to hear from colleges, they are watching the Trump administration’s growing set of attacks on higher education. While the constantly changing landscape makes it hard to know what to expect in the fall, CARA’s peer leaders – who work to support students across the course of the year – are hearing a great deal of worry.

Some students have noted that they were afraid to put anything about their identity on college forms; even though the executive order banning DEI initiatives was directed at institutions, some students “thought that putting anything other than white and straight was going to get them specifically targeted.” Both high school and college students, reading headlines about loss of funding for higher education, are worried they will lose their own aid and won’t be able to afford college. As one told us, “the uncertainty about the future is unsettling – one moment, the government provides opportunities, and the next, they’re being taken away … it feels like the American Dream has died.”

It is heartbreaking to not be able to reassure our students that the postsecondary futures that they worked so hard for are not secure. In the next several months, we will be working to keep our partner schools and peer leaders up to date on the latest policy changes. And, we will be strategizing to keep as many pathways as possible open for graduating seniors who deserve to realize their dreams.