Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Students with experience in foster care have high aspirations for postsecondary education, but they often enter college while navigating overlapping child welfare, financial aid, and campus systems. This mixed-methods study examines how students with foster care experience learned about financial aid and state child welfare benefits, how they perceived that information, and how those resources were connected to their decisions to attend college. Guided by administrative burden theory, we analyze survey data from 33 students enrolled at three public institutions in Kentucky who received the state’s foster or adopted children tuition waiver, along with eight individual interviews and one focus group with three students. Findings suggest that financial aid and the tuition waiver were central to college access, but students’ understanding of available benefits was uneven. Participants described difficulty completing the FAFSA, gathering personal documents, interpreting waiver coverage, and identifying trustworthy adults who could help them move between child welfare and postsecondary systems. They also emphasized the role of trauma, disclosure, and stigma in deciding whether and how to seek support. The findings suggest that reducing informational and procedural barriers is necessary but insufficient unless child welfare agencies and colleges also address the relational and psychological costs of help-seeking. Implications focus on coordinated, trauma-informed navigation across child welfare, financial aid, and campus support systems.</p>