Helping rural students navigate the financial aid process

BUFFALO, N.Y. ­— While rural students finish high school at a higher rate than their suburban or urban counterparts, they are the least likely of the three groups of students to attend college, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Reasons include few or no colleges in rural communities, fewer college admission officers visiting rural high schools and fears about college costs, says Ryan Creps, PhD, assistant professor of educational leadership and policy in the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education.

Creps is doing his part to change this dynamic. He’s spearheading a new community-based research project aimed at increasing the completion of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) by rural students in Western New York. Creps has partnered with school counselors in four districts: Fredonia, Brocton, Cassadaga Valley and Fillmore.

The initiative, which began this spring, provides technical support to students and their parents in creating federal student aid accounts. It also gives them an understanding of college costs and the different types of aid that may be available to them. Creps believes that helping rural students and their families with these technical challenges earlier in high school is a critical step toward boosting FAFSA completion and postsecondary enrollment.

“UB has a lot of really awesome connections within the Buffalo Public Schools, but fewer connections with rural districts,” says Creps, who joined UB in fall 2025. “This is a real opportunity to extend UB’s impact throughout Western New York.”

Funded through GSE’s early-career research incubator program, the initiative enables Creps to work with more than 250 students and their families.

Two first-year master’s students, Lauren Reinhart and Melissa Safford, are assisting with the project, which includes three workshops at each school this spring — two for students and one for parents. They will conduct follow-up visits in the fall to help students and their parents complete the official FAFSA form, which typically becomes available in October.

“Completing the FAFSA in the fall of senior year instead of waiting until the spring allows students to qualify for early financial aid and scholarship deadlines, giving them a better sense of what colleges will cost,” Creps says. “Pools of institutional and state grant money can dry up, so if students don’t lock in this financial aid early, they may end up paying more.”

Safford says she connected with rural students and communities while attending SUNY Cortland as an undergraduate.

“Going into this project, I thought that rural students may have a false assumption that postsecondary education is not meant for them and that they have no reason to think about financial aid,” Safford says. “It’s been exciting to hear about the wide range of futures that these students are working toward and to discuss with them and their families how completing the FAFSA may be beneficial to their plans.”

During the workshops, Safford shared with students that changes in federal policy have expanded Pell Grant eligibility to workforce training programs, which are short-term courses that prepare students for in-demand jobs.

Creps says that he thinks this change may help engage a wider swath of rural students in postsecondary education because several programs that may qualify for this aid are offered by rural-serving institutions, such as the workforce development center at Jamestown Community College.

Reinhart, who worked as a tour guide and open house intern as an undergraduate at SUNY Oswego, says this experience has made her more aware of the importance of acquainting students with the college process in general, especially for first-generation students.

Creps has a personal understanding of the rural student mindset. He grew up in a small, rural town in Iowa, just a few blocks from Grinnell College, a private liberal arts school.

While a strong student, Creps says it didn’t occur to him to apply to Grinnell until a neighbor, who worked in the college’s athletic department, recommended the football team take a look at him as a possible recruit. Creps, who was the first person in his family to attend college and a Pell Grant recipient, ultimately enrolled as a student-athlete and had an excellent experience. However, he says it certainly wasn’t a typical path for kids in his town.

This experience inspired Creps to work in college admissions, including several years at Brown University, where he led its rural student recruitment initiative that included developing the first rural fly-in program for students from across the country.

“In the media, rural communities are often portrayed from a deficit perspective,” he says. “While they have their challenges, this is definitely not the complete picture. There is such a strong sense of community in these places with dedicated educators working to make a difference.”

Creps says the school counselors at the four partner districts have been key to the project’s success so far. He hopes this partnership can alleviate some of the demands in the counselors’ workloads as they handle everything from socioemotional support to college and career preparation.

Creps says they discovered some complicated situations during the workshops, such as students of divorced parents not knowing which parent would be responsible for college costs and students having no contact with either parent. The counselors played an important role in navigating these sensitive conversations.

 “Identifying students who qualify as independent is much better in the spring than in the fall, when there are a bunch of deadlines, limited time and several senior-year activities competing for that time,” he says.

To drive home the message about the different types of federal financial aid, Creps and his team invite a few students to join them on stage during the workshops.

As each student shares what he or she plans to do after graduation, Creps hands them $5 to represent either a grant, a loan or federal work-study. He tells them: If you don’t work on work-study, you don’t get to keep that money. If you take out an unsubsidized loan, you not only owe that money, but you also owe interest. When he gets to the student with the grant, he tells them to keep the cash.

“Every single student wants to give the $5 back to me,” he says. “And I tell them, ‘No, this is free money.’”  

Creps hopes this project will offer evidence that early exposure to the FAFSA can increase the number of students completing the FAFSA, particularly the share of students completing it in the fall. If the project is deemed a success, Creps and his team plan to expand their outreach to additional rural schools next spring.

“One of the scariest, and probably most limiting, factors for students who do not see college as a feasible option is the fear of going into debt for a degree,” Reinhart says. “If we can provide information and resources for students to find affordable pathways, this project will be a success.”