Federal Student Aid Applications For 2014-15 Academic Year

United States federal student aid applications for the 2014-15 academic year, collected by the Department of Education. The dataset captures financial information from eligible incoming and continuing postsecondary students to determine need and calculate an Expected Family Contribution (EFC). It supports analysis of application volumes by school, state, and high school, as well as recipient data for Title IV programs.

Use Cases

• Analyze Expected Family Contribution (EFC) distributions across states of legal residence to identify regional financial need patterns.
• Model application volume trends by postsecondary school and correlate with Title IV program recipient data.
• Examine completion rates by high school to understand early-stage engagement with federal financial aid processes.

Strengths

• Covers a full academic year (2014-15) of federal student aid applications for the United States and its territories.
• Represents a universe data collection of eligible incoming postsecondary students, providing broad coverage.
• Includes derived statistics like Expected Family Contribution (EFC) for each applicant, a key analytical variable.

Limitations

• Data is from a single academic year (2014-15), limiting longitudinal or trend analysis without combining other releases.
• Sample data and specific column definitions are unavailable, complicating initial data exploration and schema understanding.

Provenance

Source

Department of Education, Federal Student Aid office.

Collection Method

Universe data collection from web and paper submissions of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

Time Range

2014-15 academic year.

Freshness

Last updated in August 2023, but the underlying data covers the 2014-15 period.

Geography

50 United States, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and outlying areas.