On March 22, the US Department of Education announced a FAFSA calculation error impacting hundreds of thousands of financial aid applications. This is expected to delay students finding out how much money they’re going to receive, and as a result what college they plan to attend.
Jackie Grealish, a college counselor at Riordan, stated, “I’m sure there’s going to be more delays as students try to decide where they’re going to end up, because there’s a serious difference between a school costing 70 thousand dollars, maybe, or with your financial aid package, it might go down to 20 thousand.”
The current financial aid process is already three months behind, but this new delay will impact up to 200,000 students.
Colleges typically ask students to make their decision by May 1 on whether they plan to enroll.
However, Melissa Nagar, another college counselor at Riordan, stated “…luckily some [colleges] have extended their deadlines for depositing to allow students to make the right decision…but it just creates more chaos….”
She emphasizes, however, that not all colleges are doing so.
This also impacts how timely a student might receive financial aid from their colleges as well–not just FAFSA.
Typically students wait to receive their financial aid letter from colleges that have accepted them before choosing which one to attend, but most colleges won’t send their award letters till the government sends them the FAFSA information.
Sophia Louie ’23, a student who applied for FAFSA, said, “The delay of FAFSA was a bit annoying since I had already submitted all of my college applications. FAFSA was only one extra thing that I had to do.”
The Department of Education says the delay was due to a “vendor issue.”
FAFSA has undergone major changes due to laws passed by Congress in 2019 and 2020, with the new version being much shorter and simpler to apply. It’s also expected to increase the amount of students eligible for aid.
Despite this, the class of ’24 has been much slower in submitting their FAFSA applications. As of March 15, according to the National College Attainment Network, nearly 31% fewer seniors had filed compared with the class of ’23 at the same time last year.
