FAFSA, also known as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is the main way high schoolers or any college students earn loans, grants or various scholarships. Usually, around the end of the year, students should have completed the application process to colleges and universities and applied for the FAFSA at the end of the year when it comes out.
This year was a bit different from the previous years. With the new changes to the form, the website itself was glitching and had to be shut down for weeks due to technical difficulties. This caused difficulties because while the form opened on January 8, it wasn’t fully working until January 15. This caused delays for student portals.
According to the Department of Education, more than 4.7 million families still managed to submit the FAFSA for the 2024-25 academic year. While that number might seem large, it falls significantly short of the 7.6 million people who filled out the FAFSA for the 2023-24 academic year by the end of February 2023. That’s a 38% drop in families filling out the FAFSA by that point compared to prior years.
Due to delays and shortage, many colleges and universities won’t receive the FAFSA information for students until the second half of March or early April. That then causes major timeline issues for families and schools.
“I’ve been waiting over three months for the FAFSA to be submitted and now it is delaying the admissions process for my college,” said senior Juliana Diuguid. This important process is going to cause a major backfire for many colleges.
Students need to make their final college acceptance decisions by May 1st and with financial aid playing a big role, it’s going to cause another hold with different families who might need more aid than others.
If colleges are already delayed in half of their student’s financial aid, families will be stuck waiting for weeks or months from now to figure out their students’ college decisions. So it’s either wait and come closer to deadlines and find out your plan or make a decision without knowing the true cost of college.
Now on the bright side, the actual deadline to fill out the FAFSA for the 2024-2025 academic year isn’t until June 30, 2025. It’s difficult on the parent’s part, having to figure out how to budget for their student, but still gives you more time to see your financial aid due to delays.
