President Barack Obama set a goal to make the United States once again lead the world in college graduation rates and, to kickstart that goal, some initiatives are offering gift cards in exchange for completed applications.

Obama's timeline for this goal is 2020, four years after the end of his second term and about seven years from when he made set the goal, so application rates need to start rising now. The application initiatives are designed to get high school seniors to apply early instead of putting it off until the spring they are supposed to graduate.

College applications can be taxing in a variety of ways. The cost can climb quickly if a student is sending out multiple applications, writing admission essays can sometimes interfere with schoolwork and lack of knowledge about certain scholarships can discourage someone from even applying.

"You always have some students who say, 'I don't want to go to college,' but they don't realize whatever it is in life, they need to go to college for it," adviser Martin Copeland at Theodore Roosevelt High School in the District of Columbia told the Associated Press. "They don't realize it until May. For those students, these incentives work."

According to the AP, American Council on Education's American College Application Campaign hand out gift cards to Chipotle in exchange for college applications. The same campaign exists in 39 states with the rewards and programs varying.

Still, a large part of the problem is family income. According to data from the College Board, about half of the nation's high school graduates from homes making $18,000 or less enrolled in college last year. In homes making $90,000 or more, about 80 percent of high school graduates enrolled in college.

Many top-tier schools have massive endowments specifically for low-income students, but these and many other scholarships are not well known. Aside from just the endowments, many scholarships exist from third party companies looking to help a specific kind of student, or offering a work-for-credit type of deal. The problem with those is they are hard to find.

Zakiya Smith, strategy director at the Lumina Foundation, believes that one-on-one help is the key to raising application rates. While incentives may attract people, interpersonal relations will get the students to follow through.

"Sometimes it's not the Chipotle gift card, it's the person being there as a resource. Right?" Smith said. "They know they have someone there who is going to help them with their applications."

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