FAFSA delays push back commitment dates
Art by Audrey Strauss
Release of the Free Application for Financial Aid (FAFSA) was delayed until early January of this year, which caused a butterfly effect of setbacks for critical dates and all financial-related information.
After much trial and error, the 2024-2025 Free Application for Financial Aid (FAFSA) opened in late December. For all prior years, the program has opened on Oct. 1, to give students a healthy amount of time to complete the time-consuming application. Major changes to the process have been in the works since 2021 but were only implemented this school year. The biggest differences in the application process are the simplification and the change from Estimated Family Contribution (EFC) to the Student Aid Index (SAI).
The new format rid 46 questions, and should now take users around ten minutes to fill out. The form has allowed families to link their FAFSA directly to the IRS, granting quick access to past years’ tax information. The change from EFC to SAI has confused many senior students. For both assessments, the higher the student receives, the less financial aid is given, and vice versa. A significant difference is that families with multiple students currently attending higher education institutions will no longer receive additional financial aid. Compared to past years, a student with a sibling in college would receive a lower EFC since the family financially support multiple students with college tuition expenses. Jordan Stuart (’24) discusses the anxieties that many students are experiencing with the FAFSA.
“It made me somewhat nervous because the school I committed to, Drexel, had their own response to it aside from other colleges, and so their response was somewhat mixed in terms of like, they told me to submit FAFSA even though it wasn’t going through to them on their end. And so it kind of just led to confusion and anxiety in that aspect of my college application process” Stuart said.
The delayed release of the form gave students and families less time to process and understand the changes FAFSA made. FAFSA originally announced that at ‘sometime in December’ the form would be released. A complete revamp of the website resulted in technical difficulties, making multiple students unable to access the application. Delays in the release date were attributed to the Education Department’s lack of account for inflation. However, an estimated 1.3 million new students will be eligible for Pell Grants which can award up to about $6,500.
In early January, the website was inaccessible, with greyed-out boxes and messages saying the website was changing. Families were left in the aftermath of the mess, with very little information about the form. On the other side, colleges are also left to come up with aid offers at the same time as admission decisions. Everybody, college counselors included, was left in the dark when it came to updates and information. Samo College Counselor, Ernesto Flores, discusses the impact of delays for students from different backgrounds.
“For those that have had issues, it’s been a massive mess,” Flores said. “And this goes from a late release to the FAFSA, issues with FAFSA accounts, students that are considered coming from mixed families, meaning parents are undocumented or don’t have a social security number literally cannot even work on the FAFSA, so that means they have incomplete FAFSAs at this time.”
The California State University (Cal State/CSU) and University of California (UC) systems have pushed back commitment dates. All UCs besides UC Berkley and out-of-state applicants will have commitment dates pushed to May 15. All 23 Cal State schools also followed suit on the delay. According to the New York Times, a minimum of 60 schools in the United States have delayed their commitment dates. While most private colleges do not rely on student information from the FAFSA and rather turn to the CSS Profile, not all are exempt. Current information on financial aid distribution is limited because aid packages have not been received by colleges yet, and there is no accurate estimation as to how much more or less students will receive. This sparks the question for many students if attending a higher education institution is even worth the financial burden. Stuart committed to Drexel University for athletics but without financial aid information, they’re offering only a vague estimate for tuition.
“I mean, I have financial aid through the school for athletic commitment but not having that consideration will definitely make not only my decision for college, but my sister’s decision especially a lot harder because she’ll have to take into consideration the financial aid aspect, of it way more than I had to,” said Stuart.
Higher education school systems are generally strict when it comes to deadlines. If an important date is missed, students may not be granted entry to the school. Flores emphasizes the importance of staying in the loop when it comes to new information from schools.
“I think the universities themselves know finance is a massive aspect, and they don’t want to pressure people,” Flores said. “We know that they have timelines, but they need to be realistic since this is a business for them. So I highly doubt that there are many schools out there that will not push back their commitment dates… But it’s a case-by-case study, for our students applying all over the country, they must be checking their portals, checking their emails, and being up to date as far as when the schools want the FAFSA in by.”