For superintendents and principals
Start where the deadline is.
Stay for the whole arc.
Senior year has a hard deadline and, in more states, a legal requirement. GPS for Life meets it this semester, then reaches down to middle school, where belief in what's possible is actually formed.
The four questions your board will ask
The requirement is already in the building.
Four states now tie financial-aid filing to graduation or publish completion rates. Caseloads don't allow one-to-one follow-through at that scale.
Sources verified September 2026.
What your district gets
Every student gets a guide. Every counselor gets time back.
Starting is small
A roster, not an IT project.
Student identifier, grade and school, which most districts can export today. From that alone, on day one, every student has:
- What college actually costs her familyNet price by income range across 6,273 institutions. Never sticker price.
- Every deadline that carries moneySourced for every state and DC. Where a state publishes none, we say so rather than guess.
- Scholarships she can actually getA curated, dated catalog, re-verified daily. Expired entries are removed, not left stale.
- FAFSA, before she sits downWho must take part, what each needs, and a private route when parents can't. That route is invisible to parent accounts.
Where your data lives
You decide, before anything else.
Four options, from shared hosting to your own hardware. Each role sees only what it should, enforced by the database, not by the screen.
The pilot
One semester. Measured against your own baseline.
One or two high schools, grades 11–12, starting in FAFSA season, with your counseling lead as sponsor. Paid per student by the school. Families are never billed. If you stop, the records are not deleted.
- PRIMARY MEASURECompletions and documented waivers
- SECONDARYDeadlines met · counselor hours saved
- THENExtend down to grades 6–10, where the thread begins