Worked by: Meri Spiro, Ani Ishmaku, Dea Kanina, Jada Mece, Kristjana

Bici, Ksenia Xhamo,

Downey College
Tuition is the life blood of any four-year college and Downey College is no exception. Each year the
Student Affairs Office initiates a campaign to get students to fill out their Free Application for Federal
Student Aid (FAFSA) application. As with any tuition aid program, there is a timeframe when you must
apply. If you miss the application deadline, then you must wait until the following period.

Downey College has lost several students during the enrollment process because the students did not
complete their FAFSA application on time. Without the help of federal aid, the students were unable to
take the courses they registered for. Hannah Hunt, vice president of Student Affairs, was eager to improve
this process. Competing for student enrollment was a significant challenge and losing students because of
FAFSA application errors was frustrating. Hunt decided to review the data from last year to determine
how she could tackle the issue this year.

Last year Hannah had her staff develop a check sheet on common errors concerning FAFSA applications.
There were five major areas and an “Other” area. She had them collect data by student status, that is,
freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. The information is listed below.
Discussion Questions

1. Hannah Hunt’s staff is very small; thus, she has limited resources available to tackle these
issues. She can focus on either a specific error or on a specific class, for example, freshman.
What do you recommend she do and why? Explain the benefit of your recommendation.

Table 1.

Sophomore Junior 580 Senior 530

Freshmen 520 500 applicatio applicatio Total Total %
Error application application n n Errors of errors
Not filling by deadline 5 4 6 3 18 19.15%
Wrong FSA ID 2 1 2 4 9 9.57%
Wrong SSN 4 3 1 8 8.51%
Did not sign FAFSA 5 5 2 3 15 15.96%
Understanding income 6 4 2 5 17 18.09%
Filling wrong years
FAFSA 2 2 5 3 12 12.77%
Other 5 4 2 4 15 15.96%
Total Errors 29 23 20 22 94
Total % of class
errors 30.85% 24.47% 21.28% 23.40%

 Total errors were calculated by adding the sum for each of the errors for each class.
 Total % errors were calculated by dividing the total errors for each category over the sum
of all total errors.

When we calculate the total errors, we can see that classes have the highest percentage of errors when
compared to FAFSA errors. The Freshman class has the highest percentage. Hannah should only focus on
one thing at a time due to limited resources, so we recommend she do something to help that class in
particular. The total percentage of errors can be reduced by assisting the freshman class. Because
freshmen are new and unfamiliar with paperwork, she can take the necessary steps to assist or guide them
in completing their paperwork. This approach is excellent because it makes the most sense to focus your
efforts on lowering the most prevalent cause of errors when you have limited resources.
 2. What is the sigma level of their FAFSA application program? Does the sigma level per
class, for example, senior, change your recommendation on whether to focus on a specific
error or a specific class? Is there any advantage in this perspective of the data? Explain
your opinion to Hannah Hunt.

The sigma level for the FAFSA application program is found by initially calculating the DPMO.

N . o of defects 94
DPMO = X 1,000,000 = X 1,000,000 = 6304
OFD x N . o of units 7 x 2130

The respective Sigma level is 4.

Table 2. Find the DPMO and Sigma Level for the classes. (Sigma level is found by
approximation)

N.o of OFD N.o of units DPMO Sigma Level

defects
Freshmen 520
29 7 520 7967 4
application
Sophomore 500
23 7 500 6571 4
application
4926
Junior 580 application 20 7 580 4
5930
Senior 530 application 22 7 530 4

Table 3. Find the DPMO and Sigma Level for error type. (Sigma level is found by
approximation)
Error
N.o of OFD N.o of units DPMO Sigma Level
defects
Not filling by deadline 18 1 2130 8450.7 4
Wrong FSA ID 9 1 2130 4225.35 4
Wrong SSN 8 1 2130 3755.87 4
Did not sign FAFSA 15 1 2130 7042.25 4
Understanding income 17 1 2130 7981.22 4
Filling wrong years FAFSA 12 1 2130 5633.8 4
Other 15 1 2130 7042.25 4

 We calculated the number of defects the same way we did the total errors in table 1.
  We calculated the respective OFD for each table, considering the opportunity for defects in each
case.
 The number of units was the total number of people that could make a defect for each category.
( total number of students in all clasess)
N . o of defects
 DPMO was calculated using the formula
OFD x N . o of units
 The sigma level was found by analyzing the DPMO in respect of the sigma values found on the
table below.

We are dealing with the same problem, but this time instead of calculating the total errors and their
percentages, we are calculating the DPMO and the sigma levels. We will analyze the DPMO of the two
highest from each table and the FAFSA DPMO change if they were solved. The two highest values of
DPMO are ‘Not filling by deadline’ with a value of 8450.7 and ‘Freshmen 520 application’ with a
value of 7967. Considering this we calculated the DPMO if we were to completely solve all
errors in these two cases and see which one would have more of an impact.
 With the freshman, if their errors went to 0, the total number of defects would go from 94 to 65
(there were 29 defects) and the DPMO would drop to 4359 from 6304, the sigma levels go to 4.1
 With ‘Not filling by deadline’ if their errors went to 0, the total number of defects would go
from 94 to 76 (there were 18 defects) and the DPMO would drop to 5097 from 6304, the sigma
levels remain approximately 4 still.

The biggest difference happened when fixing the errors of the freshman, so we still recommend Hannah
to try and help the freshman.

3. Hannah Hunt believes that filling out and submitting the FAFSA application is a no
brainer. She believes that a Six Sigma level should be easy to obtain. Do you agree? Is this a
realistic expectation? Explain your viewpoint.

Expecting the FAFSA application process to function at a Six Sigma level is unrealistic because this level
of efficiency is often only attained by highly automated and regulated operations in sectors like
manufacturing in comparison to Hannah’s staff which is small in numbers and has limited resources.
Since the FAFSA application process requires human involvement and decision-making, achieving Six
Sigma levels of performance is more difficult. However, it would still be worthwhile to work to decrease
the number of errors and continuously enhance the procedure.