Case Study: Georgia State University boosts FAFSA completion and student financial readiness with Ellucian Banner

Using early alerts to help students navigate financial aid

Georgia State University faced persistent student attrition driven by financial barriers and needed a more proactive way to identify and support students stalled in the financial-aid process. Working with Ellucian and using its student information system, Ellucian Banner, the university built an early-alert platform—Packaging Status Promotion (PSP)—to pull Banner data and surface students at financial risk so staff could intervene sooner.

PSP extracts Banner data nightly and uses categorization, decision logic, and Robotic Process Automation to guide staff outreach and workflow across Admissions, Financial Aid, Student Accounts and the Registrar. The results from Ellucian-powered PSP include a 92.7% FAFSA completion rate for new students who used the SFMC (22.1 percentage points higher), 87.2% for continuing students (7.1 points higher), teams serving twice as many students without added staff, a 20.6% lift in completing aid requirements to zero balances, 7,700 additional students achieving financial readiness, a 5.6% overall improvement in financial readiness, and a 2% reduction in summer melt.

Georgia State University