More FAFSA Delays Likely to Slow Aid and College Decisions
ELIZA HAVERSTOCK
If you’ll be in college next year, don’t expect financial aid offers anytime soon. Colleges won’t begin receiving processed FAFSAs — Free Applications for Federal Student Aid — until mid-March, the U.S. Education Department said on Tuesday. “We will email students when their information has been shared with their schools and when they can access official aid calculations on their StudentAid.gov account,” U.S. Department of Education Under Secretary James Kvaal said in a press call after the announcement. Once colleges receive processed FAFSAs, they can start building financial aid packages, which may include loan eligibility, grants, scholarships and estimated cost of attendance. That process takes another few weeks. The earliest students could get financial aid offers is the first week of April. Colleges will likely rethink the typical May 1 decision date to allow students and families enough time to consider their aid packages, says Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “It’s reasonable to think that many more states and institutions will be having those conversations about their deadlines, how far they can push those and still be able to get all their work done,” McCarthy says. “It really affects all of their timelines leading up to the beginning of the next school year.” BIGGEST MAKEOVER IN DECADES The mid-March processing delay is the latest in a long string of missteps for the new 2024-25 financial aid form, which has undergone its biggest makeover since the 1980s. The FAFSA usually launches on October 1 for the following academic year; this year, it “soft launched” three months late, on December 30. FAFSA users faced myriad glitches during the soft launch when the form was available for as little as 30 minutes per day. The online form is now available 24/7, and most technical issues have been resolved. However, some students — like those with undocumented parents — remain unable to complete the form. In late January, after the form had already been live for nearly a month, the Education Department acknowledged a major math error that would have left $1.8 billion worth of aid on the table.
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