Every year, millions of high school seniors and college students fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) with hopes that the aid they receive will get them through college or university. It also helps colleges/universities decide financial aid packages for each student based on the information from that form. It’s safe to say that the FAFSA is very important when it comes to the financial aspect of higher education. However, the 2023-2024 FAFSA has come across various issues that have left students extremely confused and financial aid offices attempting to figure out what to do.
Many packages are said to arrive by mid-April, which leaves little time for students to make their final decision if schools commit to Decision Day on May 1.
In 2019, the FAFSA Simplification Act came into effect, promising to help FAFSA applications be easier to complete. It was supposed to have been updated by December of 2023, so that students with mixed status households (people with undocumented parents) would be able to apply. However, by the time the FAFSA was released, the update did not work.
“It’s a one-on-one process with families and we’re often dealing with delicate information or private information, [which] means that we can’t help families fully, which further delays our ability to get as many students able to do it as possible,” College and Career Advisor Teresa Yeager said.
Between November 2023 and March 2024, there have been a total of 19 information updates on the official website fsapartners.ed.gov. Updates on the official FAFSA application have only been three, which only affects the questions on the FAFSA.
The first one was on December 8, 2023, which included some software updates and updates to the specification guides that help clarify how the FAFSA application works, which was not the main cause of delay. The second update on March 5, 2024 with updates of steps two and three on the application and more student verification options, specifically regarding mixed status households. The second change was the root cause of the delays, since the changes to the steps did not work with the update.
The most recent update as of writing was on March 8, 2024, with changes to the Institutional Student Information Record files. These files are documents of the students’ information that is sent to schools of choice for financial aid.
There has also been a major update where an extra $1.8 billion has been needed to be implemented due to miscalculations of the amount of money they had for financial aid, which would be detrimental to lower income students if not added.
With all these changes, and so many delays and issues that need to be fixed, many students are stressed with the complications and uncertainty of financial aid packages they’ll receive from their schools of choice.
“I’m not able to get my financial aid in on time, which makes me nervous about what colleges I applied [and] what financial aid I will be receiving,” first generation senior Giselle Perez Apolinar said.