This is the week the admissions process becomes an enrollment decision. May 1 is in less than four weeks, and for families holding admission offers — from Ivy League schools, strong public flagships, or any institution that said yes — the work now is comparison, not celebration. I will say directly what I tell every family I work with: do not commit to any school until you have compared every financial aid package, made every phone call to financial aid offices, and visited or revisited every campus you are seriously considering. The acceptance letter is not the finish line.

Behind the personal urgency of the enrollment decision, this week brought four significant policy stories that reshape the landscape for current and future students. President Trump signed a new executive order requiring all federal contractors — including universities — to certify they will not engage in DEI activities, with an April 25 deadline for agencies to insert compliance clauses in contracts and False Claims Act liability for violations. The DOJ filed a second lawsuit against Harvard in five weeks, this one over antisemitism, seeking to claw back billions in federal grants. The Grad PLUS federal loan program ends July 1 for new borrowers, affecting more than 440,000 graduate students annually. And the new federal budget released this week proposes $163 billion in domestic spending cuts, though Congress has already rejected the most damaging education proposals.

Each of these has specific implications for families navigating the college process. Here is what you need to know and do.

With Ivy Day 2026 behind us and regular decision notifications arriving from colleges across the selectivity spectrum, families now have four weeks to make enrollment commitments. The urgency is real — May 1 is a hard deadline, and institutions do not extend it. But urgency should not collapse the process. The families who make this decision well are the ones who treat it as a financial and strategic question, not an emotional one.

The single most important action right now is comparing financial aid packages side by side. Not just the offered amount — but the composition of that aid: how much is grant money (which does not need to be repaid), how much is work-study (which requires on-campus employment), and how much is loans (which must be repaid with interest). A school with a higher sticker price and a more generous grant package may cost less over four years than a school with a lower sticker price and more loans. This calculation requires a spreadsheet, not a feeling.

Ask every school's financial aid office directly whether they will match or improve a competing offer. This is standard practice and institutions expect it — particularly in the current enrollment environment, where the demographic cliff is creating real pressure on mid-tier and regional institutions to fill their classes. A polite, specific phone call with competing offer documentation in hand is worth the 15 minutes it takes.

On March 26, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order titled "Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors," directing all executive departments and agencies to insert a compliance clause in federal contracts requiring universities and other recipients to attest that they will not engage in "any racially discriminatory DEI activities." Federal agencies have until April 25 to insert these clauses into their existing contracts. Violations carry significant consequences: contract termination, debarment from future federal work, and False Claims Act civil liability — the same legal mechanism used to recover billions in government fraud cases.

Simultaneously, the General Services Administration proposed a rule requiring all federal funding recipients — not just contractors — to certify compliance with anti-DEI executive orders as a condition of registering in the System for Award Management (SAM), the federal database through which all grant and contract recipients must be registered to receive federal funds. Higher education groups including the American Council on Education called the proposals "vague, undefined, overbroad, burdensome, and legally contested." A coalition of 23 Democratic attorneys general filed public comments calling the GSA rule unlawful.

The practical effect on campuses is already visible even before formal enforcement. Facing the threat of funding loss, universities have been terminating race-based scholarships, removing DEI language from websites, laying off diversity staff, and shutting minority student support centers — often preemptively, without waiting for a formal finding of violation. Legal experts note that the administration does not need to win in court to achieve compliance: the threat of a compliance investigation has proven sufficient.

The Department of Justice filed a civil rights lawsuit against Harvard University on March 20, 2026, alleging that Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by being deliberately indifferent to the harassment, physical assault, stalking, and intimidation of Jewish and Israeli students following Hamas' October 7, 2023 attacks. The suit seeks to recover what the government characterizes as "billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies awarded to a discriminatory institution." It is the second DOJ lawsuit against Harvard in five weeks; the first, filed February 13, concerned Harvard's alleged refusal to turn over admissions data for SFFA compliance review.

Harvard's response has been combative. The university called the suit "yet another pretextual and retaliatory action by the administration for refusing to turn over control of Harvard to the federal government." More than 100 Jewish faculty members and staff at Harvard — including faculty in Harvard Divinity School and the government department — signed an open letter rejecting the DOJ's characterization, writing that the "portrait of Harvard" in the complaint was one they "do not recognize." They characterized the lawsuit as "cynically exploit[ing] concerns about antisemitism to justify what can only be described as an authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education."

The federal judge overseeing related cases has already expressed skepticism about the government's legal theories. A September 2025 ruling found the administration's funding freeze was "retaliation for protected speech" and characterized it as using antisemitism allegations as "a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault" on research universities. Harvard has taken significant steps to address campus antisemitism — adopting the IHRA definition, establishing a presidential task force, and enforcing anti-harassment policies — which the university argues demonstrates the opposite of deliberate indifference.

The Grad PLUS federal loan program, which has allowed graduate and professional students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance since 2006, will be eliminated for new borrowers beginning July 1, 2026, under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law in July 2025. More than 440,000 students per year currently rely on Grad PLUS loans. Beginning this fall, new borrowers will face strict annual caps: $20,500 for most graduate students (with a $100,000 lifetime limit), and $50,000 for students in qualifying professional programs (with a $200,000 lifetime limit).

The definition of "professional" programs is narrower than most students expect. Only specific fields qualify for the higher $50,000 limit: medicine, dentistry, law, pharmacy, and a limited number of other licensure-based fields. Nursing, physical therapy, social work, education, and MBA programs are explicitly excluded from the professional classification — capping those students at $20,500 per year. Average annual medical school costs exceed $59,000; the new professional cap is $50,000 — creating a funding gap students must fill from private loans or savings. Average law school costs routinely exceed the $200,000 lifetime limit.

Students currently enrolled in a graduate program who have already borrowed a Grad PLUS or Direct Unsubsidized loan before July 1, 2026 qualify for a "legacy provision" that allows them to continue borrowing under current rules for up to three more years or until they complete their program, whichever comes first. Families planning graduate school for fall 2026 need to understand whether their intended program qualifies for the professional cap and build a financing plan that accounts for the gap between federal limits and actual program cost.

The Trump administration's new federal budget, released this week, proposes $1.5 trillion in defense spending alongside $163 billion in cuts to non-defense domestic programs. For higher education specifically, the proposal seeks to reduce the Department of Education's budget by $12 billion (15.3%), eliminate TRIO and GEAR UP programs entirely, cut Federal Work-Study funding by 80%, eliminate the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant ($910 million), and reduce the maximum Pell Grant award by 23% from $7,395 to $5,710 for the 2026–27 award year.

The good news: Congress has already rejected the most damaging proposals. The bipartisan FY 2026 appropriations legislation passed in January maintained the Pell Grant maximum at $7,395, preserved TRIO and GEAR UP at existing funding levels, maintained Federal Work-Study, and specifically blocked the administration from unilaterally transferring Education Department programs to other agencies without congressional approval. Presidential budget proposals are executive wish lists; they require congressional approval that has historically not materialized for the most aggressive education cuts.

The ongoing significance of the budget proposal is not what it achieves immediately — it is what it signals about administration priorities and the political environment in which every college access program now operates. Families should understand that the structural funding threats to Pell, TRIO, and college access programs are real and persistent, even when Congress succeeds in holding the line for a given fiscal year.

On May 1: This is the week counselors can add the most value to the families they serve. The enrollment decision is four weeks away, and most families are making it with incomplete financial information. The most important guidance you can provide right now is concrete: build the four-year cost comparison spreadsheet, make the phone calls to financial aid offices, schedule the admitted students' day visits. These are not abstract suggestions — they are tasks that should happen in the next two weeks. Families who call financial aid offices requesting reconsideration regularly receive improved packages. Encourage every family to make that call.

On DEI and scholarship programs: Any student who was offered a diversity-based, first-generation, or identity-related scholarship should verify its current status directly with the financial aid office before May 1. The pace of program changes across institutions has accelerated significantly in the past 60 days. Do not assume continuity.

On Grad PLUS and graduate school planning: For your college-bound students who have expressed interest in professional or graduate school — medicine, law, nursing, social work, education — now is the moment to introduce the conversation about how graduate education financing has fundamentally changed. The students in your 10th and 11th grade advisee groups who plan professional careers need to understand that the federal loan programs they were counting on will look very different when they arrive at professional school. Build this into your college planning conversations now.