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For Iowa College Access Network (ICAN), February is the busiest month of the year.

“We have 16 employees, and there are only two of us here today,” said Juan Garcia, the manager for ICAN, a service provided by the Iowa Student Loan Liquidity Corp.

As part of financial aid awareness month, Garcia said most of his staff members spend their days at high schools across Iowa, encouraging and helping students fill out Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms. It’s important for students to fill out FAFSA forms in February, he said, because most colleges and universities require them to be submitted by March 1.

“We do ‘fill out the form day’ where we visit schools and spend from 11 o’clock to 7 o’clock at night taking appointments every half-hour” to help students and parents fill out FAFSA forms, Garcia said. “So instead of waiting for the families to come to us, now we’re going to the locations to serve them.”

Currently, ICAN has a presence in 96 percent of the state’s schools. Garcia said he would like to see that increase to 100 percent.

“It’s about bringing that understanding to the families and students that yeah, you can do it. It is possible. It can happen,” Garcia said. “It makes us realize that there is lack of knowledge out there, so we want to make sure that students who are in high school and are thinking ‘There is no way I can go to college, my parents don’t make any money, why should I bother going to college?’ know that there are options and there are opportunities for those students. It won’t be easy. You’re going to have to put in an effort to make it happen, but it can happen.”

Garcia said ICAN starts talking to students as early as the eighth grade to inform them of their options beyond high school, and to provide them with timelines and checklists of the steps they need to take to prepare for college.

“People ask, ‘Is this too early to start thinking about college?’ Never,” Garcia said. “We want to make sure those students are better prepared as they go to high school because the better prepared you are in high school, the more likely you are going to be successful in college.”