For high school seniors across the nation, the decision of selecting their future college is a momentous one, and the uncertainty surrounding financial support plays a pivotal role in their considerations.
The FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is a crucial component in finding financial assistance. This online form is utilized by a vast array of educational institutions, from schools to colleges to universities, as well as private scholarship programs nationwide. By providing details about a student’s financial status, the FAFSA assesses eligibility for various forms of federal financial aid, including grants, loans, scholarships, and work-study program funds.
“Years ago, state legislators recognized that with the complexity of the FAFSA, there were so many questions and sections that needed to be filled out that could be a real roadblock for students and families in terms of filing and accessing aid that they’re eligible for. Particularly students who are perhaps on the margins, who live within a mixed-status family, or for families where English is not the language spoken at home, it could be challenging to complete the FAFSA,” said college counselor Mrs. Mollie Falkner.
In response to these challenges, Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act in December 2020. This legislation aimed to streamline the FAFSA process by reducing the number of questions from 100 questions to just under 50, expanding college selection spaces from 10 to 20, and offering access in 11 languages.
While the FAFSA is normally launched on October 1, the 2024-2025 FAFSA didn’t launch until December 30th after a three-month delay.
“Normally, the FAFSA is aligned with the college admissions cycle. Students would submit financial aid applications simultaneously with admission applications and would hear back from their colleges and receive financial aid offers as they were admitted, usually no later than March or April. This would give them ample time to review all of their offers and make informed decisions by the national decision deadline of May 1,” Falkner said.
However, along with the late release heightening already present levels of stress and anxiety during the college application season, students and parents attempting to fill out the form were met with a variety of problems.
“There were a lot of roadblocks and technical issues. There were things like not accounting for inflation or maybe technical issues with the application. Students and college financial aid offices were impacted. Long story short, many students are still waiting for official final financial aid offers. Here we are on April 22, and those offers are slowly rolling out throughout the rest of the month and even through early in mid-May,” Falkner said.
Students, like senior Emma Lam-America, are seeing those challenges and delays affect their process.
“On the FAFSA website, the signature button was broken, and even though I submitted the form in January, I wasn’t able to access it for corrections and other updates until recently in April. It caused a lot of frustration and uncertainty,” said Lam-America.
As of April, the Washington Post reported that of the 37 FAFSA “problems the department has identified to date, 18 have been resolved. Meanwhile, “approximately 30 percent of the 7 million FAFSA records that it has transmitted to colleges are affected by processing or data errors.”
The department said it will reprocess these records and begin sending them to schools by May 1.
“It’s a major issue, and I fear that the students with families where English isn’t the first language or students who go to schools that don’t have a lot of support to go ask someone for assistance, that they’re going to fall through the cracks,” Falkner said.
Some colleges are maintaining May 1 as their decision deadline as they are using other financial aid applications such as the CSS Profile or institutional financial aid applications to collect information from students. From there, they can present students with an estimated financial aid offer that will be fairly accurate even after they process the student’s FAFSA.
“Other colleges recognizing that students may need a financial aid offer to make an informed college decision have pushed their decision deadlines to May 15, June 1, or even later into the summer. So that means students may have to respond to some colleges by May 1 without having a full picture of all of their options across the board” said Falkner.
As a result, students are put in difficult positions, where they must accept or decline admission offers from college before they know what their other offers are, leading to a challenging 2023-2024 admission season.
“This year it’s been challenging for seniors, and the stress that I’ve observed students experiencing is unfair. Colleges are trying to be as flexible and responsive as possible, but it’s created a mess for students experiencing delays that were a result of the FAFSA Simplification Act. Hopefully, it’s a one-time thing,” Falkner said.
