Five Things Every College-Bound Family Needs to Know This Week
- Nathan Hurwitz
- Aug 14
- 9 min read
Five Things Every College-Bound Family Needs to Know This Week
The Common App reopened, the FAFSA beta launched, college costs jumped 10%, elite schools doubled down on testing, and a federal judge let a major early-decision lawsuit move forward. Here’s what actually matters in each.
By Dr. Nathan Hurwitz · College Admissions Consultant, Hurwitz Consulting · August 14, 2026
The 2026-27 admissions cycle is fully underway. In the span of two weeks, the Common Application reopened, the Department of Education began beta-testing next year’s FAFSA, a new report put hard numbers on rising college costs, the last holdout Ivy League school announced a return to standardized testing, and a federal judge allowed an antitrust case against 32 selective colleges to move forward. Any one of these would be worth a family’s attention. All five landing in the same two weeks means this is one of the highest-leverage moments of the entire admissions calendar — and worth walking through story by story.
Time-Sensitive: This Week Only
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.
If 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. There’s no fixed package requirement. Schedule a College Readiness Assessment and we’ll figure out what makes sense for your family.
TOPIC 01 · ADMISSIONS PROCESS
The Common App 2026-27 Cycle Is Open — What Changed
Essay prompts stayed the same. The Activities section didn’t — and neither did the calendar you should be working against.
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.
Dr. Hurwitz’s Take: I tell every rising senior the same thing every August: the essay you draft in a quiet week in August is almost always better than the one you rush in October between homework and college visits. Use the "Activities and Experiences" rename as a prompt to reconsider what you’ve been leaving off — a part-time job, caregiving for a younger sibling, or a long-running hobby may carry more weight in an admissions reader’s eyes than you’d expect.
What Works: Drafting the personal statement in August, before supplemental essays and fall testing compete for time.
What Doesn’t: Waiting until September or October to start, or treating the activities list as an afterthought.
Action Checklist
• Create or confirm your Common App account and verify prior-year data rolled over
• Draft a full personal statement this month, even in rough form
• Build or refine your initial college list before supplemental essays are assigned
• Review the new Activities and Experiences section for entries you may have skipped
TOPIC 02 · FINANCIAL AID
The 2027-28 FAFSA: Beta Testing Begins, October 1 Launch Targeted
The form your rising senior needs for freshman-year aid is already being built. Here’s what to do before it exists.
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.
Dr. Hurwitz’s Take: Families treat the FAFSA open date like a starting gun, but the real work happens before it fires. Get every contributor’s FSA ID created this month and confirm each account shows as "matched." That fifteen-minute task, done in August with no deadline pressure, is the single biggest predictor of whether a family files smoothly on day one or is still untangling identity verification issues in November.
What Works: Creating FSA IDs for every contributor in August, before the form even exists.
What Doesn’t: Waiting until October to figure out contributor status for separated or remarried households.
Action Checklist
• Create a StudentAid.gov FSA ID for the student and each contributing parent now
• Work out who your "contributors" are, especially for separated or remarried households
• Locate your family’s 2025 tax return ahead of the IRS data transfer
• Confirm which target schools also require the CSS Profile
TOPIC 03 · AFFORDABILITY
College Costs Jump 10% — What the New Numbers Mean for You
A new Sallie Mae report shows families are paying more out of pocket, just as federal borrowing limits shrink.
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.
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 a structure that previously allowed borrowing up to the full cost of attendance. Price is doing real work in the decision-making process, too: 79% of families said they eliminated at least one college at multiple stages specifically because of cost.
Dr. Hurwitz’s Take: The families who navigate this best don’t build their college list around the sticker price — they build it around the net price, which can look dramatically different school to school. With Parent PLUS borrowing now capped well below the full cost of attendance at many private colleges, run the net price calculator for every school on your list before you fall in love with any of them.
What Works: Running net price calculators before applying and having an honest family budget conversation early.
What Doesn’t: Eliminating schools by sticker price alone, or assuming Parent PLUS will cover any remaining gap.
Action Checklist
• Run the net price calculator for every school currently on your list
• Understand the new $20,000/year, $65,000 aggregate Parent PLUS caps
• Compare aid packages side by side once offers arrive, not just the headline cost
• Set a family budget number together before applications go out
TOPIC 04 · TESTING POLICY
Elite Colleges Return to the SAT/ACT — Will Everyone Follow?
All eight Ivies have now moved away from test-optional. More than 90% of other four-year colleges haven’t.
With Columbia’s announcement that it will reinstate standardized testing requirements 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 shortly after the pandemic. The research driving these decisions is genuinely mixed: Ivy-Plus research found test scores substantially more predictive of academic preparation than high school grades, while researchers at CUNY, studying a large urban public system, found the opposite.
Meanwhile, FairTest reports more than 2,000 bachelor’s-degree-granting institutions remain test-optional or test-free — over 90% of the sector. 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, a proposal UC’s academic senate is expected to weigh in on by the end of this academic year.
Dr. Hurwitz’s Take: This is not a national mandate — it’s a bifurcation. If any school on your student’s list requires testing, that requirement doesn’t care what the rest of the list does, so plan to test regardless of your overall strategy. Verify each target school’s current-cycle policy directly rather than relying on last year’s list.
What Works: Verifying each school’s current testing policy directly and registering for a fall test date as a hedge.
What Doesn’t: Assuming "test optional" is a permanent, sector-wide fact, or skipping prep entirely.
Action Checklist
• Check each target school’s current-cycle testing policy on its admissions page
• Register for fall SAT/ACT dates now if any school on the list requires scores
• Decide on a score-submission strategy for the test-optional schools on the list
TOPIC 05 · LEGAL / EARLY DECISION
Early Decision Antitrust Suit Can Proceed — What It Means For Applicants
A federal judge let the case against 32 selective colleges move forward. Here’s what it doesn’t change — and what it should remind families to check.
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. Current and former students allege the colleges violated the Sherman Act by agreeing not to compete for early decision applicants, suppressing financial aid competition and inflating the true cost of attendance. Kelley did dismiss the claims against Common App, Scoir, and the Consortium on Financing Higher Education.
The colleges’ attorneys countered that early decision is "totally voluntary" and that applicants can walk away from the pledge. The plaintiffs’ attorney pushed back that colleges present the ED agreement as something close to a binding contract, pressuring many applicants into accepting the first offer they receive. The case is far from resolved, 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.
Dr. Hurwitz’s Take: This lawsuit won’t change anything about this year’s applications, and I’m not telling families to avoid early decision because of it. What it should do is prompt a conversation you should be having anyway: never apply ED to a school your family hasn’t already confirmed you can afford at full price. Every ED agreement I’ve seen includes a release clause for insufficient aid — read it before you sign.
What Works: Applying ED only after confirming affordability at full sticker price and reading the release clause.
What Doesn’t: Applying ED purely to "improve the odds" or assuming the pledge is legally unbreakable.
Action Checklist
• Run the net price calculator before committing to any early decision application
• Read the school’s ED financial release policy in full before signing
• Keep a strong EA or RD backup plan in place regardless of ED confidence
Sources: Common App Official Blog · Maia Education · Essay Coach · U.S. Department of Education (Feb. 2026 FAFSA announcement) · NASFAA · CollegeHelpGuide · Sallie Mae/Ipsos "How America Pays for College" (2026) · Higher Ed Dive (Aug. 10–12, 2026) · FairTest · Opportunity Insights · U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts
Guidance Counselor Corner
On the Common App and FAFSA calendar: This is the window to get seniors moving before school-year momentum takes over. A short August check-in — confirming account rollover, essay drafting status, and FSA ID creation — pays off enormously in October and November.
On testing policy: Encourage students to verify their target list’s testing requirements directly rather than assuming from last year, ideally before fall SAT/ACT registration deadlines.
On early decision: Use the antitrust ruling as a hook for a broader conversation about ED’s financial realities — frame it around net price, not headlines.
Ready for Personalized Guidance?
From the Common App and FAFSA to final decisions, I’m here to help — for as many sessions as your family needs.
Dr. Nathan Hurwitz · College Admissions Consultant · Hurwitz Consulting
hurwitzadmissions.com · nathan@hurwitzadmissions.com · (203) 613-9262
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