University administrators, boards of trustees, and state and federal legislators spend significant time and effort focused on retention and graduation rates at American colleges and universities. The California State University (CSU) is no exception with its systemwide focus on Graduation Initiative 2025 which includes a commitment to eliminate equity gaps for students from underserved communities. This study examined the relationship between financial aid, retention, and graduation for the cohort of first-time freshman enrolled at the CSU in fall 2013. Using 6-years of student enrollment and financial aid data from 22 of the 23 campuses in the CSU system, descriptive statistics and multi-variate analyses highlighted differences in average financial aid packages by campus, by race/ethnicity, and by Expected Family Contribution (EFC) levels. Findings indicated that grants were awarded evenly by race/ethnicity within EFC groups, but differences remained by campus. In total, Black/African American and Latinx students had the highest average grant amounts, but Black/African American students were more likely to take student loans than Latinx students which ultimately lowered their average gap-in-aid. A discrete-time event history analysis drew on Chen's (2008) heterogeneous theoretical framework to examine the longitudinal connections between financial aid, over time, to rates of stop-out and graduation. The analysis included demographic, college preparation, college academic and financial aid variables, along with interactions across variables to measure differential impact of financial aid by race/ethnicity and EFC levels. Results indicated that types and amounts of financial aid and gap-in-aid impact the odds of stop-out and graduation differentially by race/ethnicity. Black/African American students were the only group who had a positive correlation between increased grants and loans and graduation. All other racial/ethnic groups showed slightly reduced or steady odds of graduating as grant and loan amounts increased. However, all students were less likely to stop-out, and more likely to graduate when gap-in-aid was lower. These findings can seem counterintuitive for some student groups and create new questions to be answered with future research that would benefit from a mixed-methods approach to better understand how individual students respond to financial aid choices. University leaders, financial aid administrators and higher education policy makers would benefit from data-driven decision making about the type and amount of financial aid awarded, and also the gap-in-aid left for a student to manage between the amount of aid received and the total cost of attendance. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]