Dear Parents and Guidance Counselors,

The 2026-27 admissions cycle is officially underway. The Common App reopened on August 1 with its seven essay prompts unchanged, and the Department of Education began beta-testing the 2027-28 FAFSA on August 5, with a public launch targeted for October 1. If you have a rising senior, the next sixty days will do more to shape their application timeline than any other stretch of the year.

This edition also covers two developments worth your full attention regardless of where your student is applying: a federal judge's ruling that the antitrust case against 32 early-decision colleges can proceed, and the continued swing back toward standardized testing among elite schools. Both carry real strategic implications, which we unpack below.

— Dr. Nathan Hurwitz
College Admissions Consultant · Hurwitz Consulting · (203) 613-9262

Now is the time to get the Common App and FAFSA prepared.

Both engines of the admissions process opened this month. The Common App is live now. The FAFSA is in beta and opens fully on October 1. Families who use August and September to get organized — rather than scrambling in October and November — consistently end up with stronger applications and larger aid packages. This is genuinely one of the highest-leverage windows of the entire process.

If you or your family could use support with any part of this — the Common App and FAFSA, building or narrowing a college list, scheduling and preparing for college visits, running a scholarship or financial aid search, building pros-and-cons comparisons across schools, or working through a final acceptance decision — I'm available to meet for as many sessions as it takes to get you where you need to be. There's no fixed package requirement. Just reach out and we'll figure out what makes sense for your family.

The Common Application for the 2026-27 admissions cycle opened on August 1, following the standard reset that closes the first-year application each July 28 and reopens it days later. For families who've been through this before, the headline is reassuring: the seven personal statement prompts are unchanged, and the 250–650 word range remains the same. Anything drafted over the summer transfers directly into the live platform with no risk of the prompts shifting underneath it.

The most consequential update this cycle is a rename: the "Activities" section is now "Activities and Experiences." It's more than cosmetic. The change reflects an intentional broadening of what counts as meaningful — family caregiving responsibilities, informal work, and hobbies can now be entered more naturally, and the leadership/title field is optional rather than required. Common App also continued expanding Direct Admissions, its program allowing eligible students to receive non-binding offers from participating colleges before they've even submitted a formal application.

Other changes are smaller but worth knowing: clearer visibility into which colleges accept fee waivers before a student applies, fewer required questions for independent applicants regarding parents and siblings, and minor clarity improvements to the citizenship and standardized testing questions. None of it should change a family's strategy — but all of it rewards students who log in early rather than waiting until the fall crunch.

The Department of Education began beta testing the 2027-28 FAFSA on August 5, with a second beta wave expected in late August or early September and a public launch targeted for October 1 — the standard opening date the form has been chasing since the disastrous 2024-25 rollout. Last cycle's form, the 2026-27 FAFSA, actually launched a week early on September 24, 2025, which the Department is treating as its new benchmark for reliability.

This year's form uses your family's 2025 tax return and brings three meaningful upgrades: pre-populated data for returning filers so renewals take minutes rather than a full restart, plainer language throughout, and — for the first time — the ability for parents with multiple children to reuse their information across every child's form instead of retyping it each time.

None of that changes the single most important piece of advice for families: October 1 is a target, not a guarantee, and the step that derails families most often — sorting out who counts as a "contributor" on the form — has nothing to do with the launch date at all. For separated, divorced, or remarried parents, working out who needs to create a StudentAid.gov account and confirm their identity is often the most confusing part of the entire process, and it's something families can and should resolve well before October.

Between the Common App reopening and the FAFSA beta launching, this is exactly the moment to get organized. My free Parent Starter Kit walks you through the essentials — timelines, checklists, and what to prioritize first.

A new "How America Pays for College" report from Sallie Mae and Ipsos puts a hard number on what many families already suspected: average college costs — tuition, fees, housing, and other expenses combined — hit $34,019 in the 2025-26 academic year, a 10% jump from the year before. Families covered 49% of that out of pocket from income and savings, another 27% through scholarships and grants, and 22% through borrowing, with a small remainder from gifts.

The timing matters because the borrowing side of that equation is changing. New federal lending caps took effect in July, limiting Parent PLUS loans to $20,000 per year per student and $65,000 in aggregate — down from the previous structure, which allowed borrowing up to the full cost of attendance. Two-thirds of surveyed families said they actually support the new lending limits, but a majority also said they expect colleges to respond by lowering tuition or increasing aid, which most institutions have limited room to do given thin operating margins nationwide.

Price is doing real work in the decision-making process: 79% of families said they eliminated at least one college at multiple stages specifically because of cost. Yet the same survey found striking optimism about the payoff — 80% of families said they're willing to stretch their resources for a degree, and the overwhelming majority still believe a diploma leads to a stronger income and career outcomes.

With Columbia's announcement that it will reinstate standardized testing requirements for undergraduates starting in the 2027-28 cycle, all eight Ivy League institutions have now either reinstated the SAT/ACT or committed to doing so, joining MIT, Johns Hopkins, and other highly ranked schools that returned to testing requirements shortly after the pandemic. The Trump administration has taken a firm public stance favoring test requirements, though its higher-ed compact tying federal funding preference to testing mandates has so far been accepted by none of the institutions initially offered it.

The research driving these decisions is genuinely mixed and worth understanding rather than dismissing in either direction. Brown economist John Friedman, who helped lead a major study of test scores at "Ivy-Plus" institutions, found that test scores were substantially more predictive of academic preparation there than high school grades — a conclusion echoed by Dartmouth's own internal research. But researchers at CUNY, studying a large urban public system, found the opposite: high school grades outpredicted test scores for their student population. As Friedman put it, "the answer depends on what one finds when universities go do the work on their data."

Meanwhile, FairTest reports more than 2,000 bachelor's-degree-granting institutions remain test-optional or test-free — over 90% of the sector. The University of Vermont made its test-optional policy permanent last year after finding no meaningful gap in outcomes between students who submitted scores and those who didn't. And in California, more than 2,300 University of California faculty have signed a letter urging the system to reinstate SAT/ACT math requirements for STEM majors, citing widespread underpreparedness — a proposal UC's academic senate is expected to weigh in on by the end of this academic year.

U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley ruled on August 7 that an antitrust lawsuit against 32 highly selective colleges — including Cornell, Rice, Dartmouth, Wesleyan, and Washington University in St. Louis — can proceed to the next stage. Current and former students filed the suit in August 2025, alleging the colleges violated the Sherman Act by agreeing not to compete for early decision applicants, a practice they say artificially suppresses financial aid competition and inflates the true cost of attendance. Kelley did dismiss the claims against Common App, Scoir, and the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, finding no evidence those organizations directly facilitated any agreement.

The plaintiffs' central argument isn't that early decision itself is illegal — it's that the colleges allegedly agreed among themselves not to admit a student who had already committed early decision elsewhere, eliminating the competitive pressure that might otherwise push schools to offer better aid to keep a student in play. Attorneys for the colleges countered that early decision is "totally voluntary," that applicants can walk away from the pledge, and that students seeking aid aren't expected to withdraw other applications until an aid offer is actually in hand. The plaintiffs' attorney pushed back that colleges present the ED agreement as something close to a binding contract, which pressures many applicants into accepting the first offer they receive.

The case is far from resolved — the plaintiffs are also seeking class action status for what could be tens of thousands of current and former ED applicants — and it will likely be years before any outcome affects how early decision actually operates. But the underlying tension it highlights is real and immediate: early decision, by design, asks students to commit before they can compare financial aid offers.

On the Common App and FAFSA calendar: This is the window to get seniors moving before school-year momentum takes over your schedule. A short August check-in — confirming account rollover, essay drafting status, and FSA ID creation for each student's family — pays off enormously in October and November, when your caseload triples.

On testing policy: Encourage students not to assume their target list's testing requirements from last year still hold. With policy shifting school by school, a quick verification pass across each student's list — ideally before fall registration deadlines for the SAT/ACT — can prevent a scramble in late fall.

On early decision: The antitrust ruling is a useful hook for a broader conversation with families about ED's financial realities. Frame it around net price, not headlines — students should understand exactly what an ED release clause covers before they sign.

Forward freely with attribution — counselors are welcome to share this newsletter with families on their caseload.

From the Common App and FAFSA to final decisions, I'm here to help — for as many sessions as your family needs.