If you’re among the millions of students admitted or enrolled in college, you’re probably waiting to learn exactly how much it will cost this fall.
Filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid is a critical step in the college process, and the redesigned form - with fewer questions and more automated features - is supposed to make it easier. Updates to the FAFSA formula will also deliver more financial assistance to students from low- and moderate-income households.
But the rollout of the financial aid form has been tumultuous because of ongoing delays and technical glitches.
So far, the Education Department has received more than 7 million submissions, fewer than the previous year. Some students are still struggling to complete the form. Some applications must be corrected or reprocessed. The problems are delaying colleges from providing financial aid packages.
[Few Alaska high school seniors have applied for federal student aid this year]
The department has issued a flurry of notices tracking its progress in addressing the problems. Here is what you should know.
What is the FAFSA?
Created in 1992, the FAFSA opens the door to billions of dollars in grants and scholarships from the federal government, states, foundations and colleges. It is essential to qualify for federal loans and work-study jobs, and can determine whether students with limited financial resources enroll or remain in college. Anyone pursuing higher education or a trade should fill out the application. Each year, more than 17 million students submit the form.
What happened with the rollout of the new form?
After years of complaints about the complexity of the form, Congress passed legislation in recent years to reduce the questions from 103 to around 30 and to adjust a formula used to determine aid eligibility. The changes ensure more students will receive the Pell Grant, a form of aid for undergraduates with exceptional financial need.
The Education Department experienced delays in launching the redesigned form, and when the form launched in December, many students and parents had trouble accessing or completing the application. Technical glitches have shut out some families, especially those in which one or both parents are undocumented and don’t have Social Security numbers.
Of the 37 problems the department has identified to date, 18 have been resolved. While parents without Social Security numbers can now contribute to the form, many still can’t pull in tax data from the IRS and must manually enter the information.
The form’s glitches have contributed to high application rejections that require students to make corrections. Applicants can normally correct errors as quickly as they are discovered, but students have waited for months to update forms this cycle as the department rolls out the process piece by piece.
Meanwhile, the Education Department said approximately 30 percent of the 7 million FAFSA records that it has transmitted to colleges are affected by processing or data errors. There could be some overlap with forms that require student corrections, according to the department.
The delays and errors have made it difficult for colleges to create aid packages for students. Many colleges pushed back their usual May 1 enrollment deadline by two weeks or a month. But given the ongoing problems, that still might not be enough time for some students.
When will the faulty FAFSA records be reprocessed?
The department said it is working to get the correct records to colleges.
It said about 20 percent of the 6.6 million application records sent out in late March were affected by tax data not being properly transmitted by the IRS. The department said it will reprocess these records and begin sending them to schools by May 1.
Starting April 15, the Education Department will also reprocess roughly 200,000 records that had been miscalculated after the agency had neglected to include students’ reported savings and investments - an error that could have led colleges to offer more money than students were entitled to receive. The department expects the vast majority of these reprocessed records to reduce student aid eligibility.
Colleges have been provided lists by the department identifying which records are affected by these issues so they can begin to package aid offers.
I submitted my form but there were errors. Can I fix it?
The Education Department has begun allowing some students to correct errors on their financial aid forms on StudentAid.gov during a testing mode that opens access to the site for brief periods. But it will expand access broadly to more students and parents next week.
Corrections should only take a few minutes for most applicants, according to the department. Colleges and states should receive the corrected application, and students should be able to review their updated FAFSA summary within one to three days of submission.
As many as 16 percent of FAFSA applications require a student correction. Common problems include missing signatures or students choosing to only be considered for unsubsidized loans - an error that occurred because of the awkward wording of the question on the form that has since been fixed.
Can I still fill out a FAFSA?
Yes, the federal deadline to submit the 2024-2025 FAFSA will be June 30, 2025.
Don’t let the rocky rollout scare you off. There is a lot of money at stake, and many students could receive significant financial support this year because of the changes to the formula. The only way to find out is to complete the FAFSA.
When will I learn how much financial aid I could get?
Colleges and universities began receiving FAFSA records from the Education Department in mid-March, but some are waiting for files that contained errors to be reprocessed at the agency. Some schools began sending out offers this month, with many anticipating waves of packages going out the door in the coming weeks.
Still, some students may not have an offer in hand until May. Many colleges that use the CSS Profile, another financial aid form produced by the College Board, have been able to provide rough estimates of how much grant and scholarship money students will receive as institutions wait for the Education Department to reprocess some files.
Where can I learn more?
For more information about the FAFSA, visit fafsa.gov.