Seniors Impacted By New FAFSA Application
Financial aid form brings difficulties to students looking to pursue college.
By Jocelyn Cosgrove
Financial aid form brings difficulties to students looking to pursue college.
By Jocelyn Cosgrove
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid opened Dec. 31, 2023, for students and families to fill out after a two month delay and new changes made to the original form.
In 2020, Congress signed the FAFSA Simplification Act into law to be rolled out for the 2024-25 school year, changing the application to make it simpler for families to fill out.
Even with the new changes, there have been problems with the website and a money miscalculation. According to an NPR article, students will possibly be receiving less federal financial aid as the Department of Education did not count inflation as a factor when budgeting for FAFSA. While they have stated they will fix the $1.8 billion mistake before the April 2 deadline, it is yet to be seen as for what will happen.
Many students such as Luke Jennings, 12, had not yet heard about the Department of Education’s mistake regarding financial aid money set aside for applicants and feels that with this mistake, it will affect students who need financial aid to help pay for college.
“I think with my current situation and my personal family makeup (and) with a lot of changes with income and money and stuff that's personally affected me, that inflation will compound to make that situation worse. I think that will apply for all seniors who are applying and it will only exacerbate the issues that have already appeared. I think it will just make them worse,” said Jennings.
In light of the later FAFSA application deadline, the California State University and University of California systems announced they have pushed their intent to register deadline to May 15, instead of May 1, giving students more time to get their financial aid packages before making their college decisions.
The simplified application has been open for over a month now and has been getting many mixed reactions from students, parents and others. DCAC college advisor Justin Philips feels that most of the changes made to the application have made it better, but website problems have been overshadowing the good that the changes are doing.
“Reducing the amount of questions from over 100 to 40 whatever it is, I think that's good. What I think the issue is (that) there are a whole bunch of glitches on the FAFSA website. Students and their parents (are) not being able to create an FSA ID (because) the website’s glitching,” said Philips. “If everything is working as it should be, then I think it’s pretty good. It's just what I’m experiencing is that more times than not, it's not working the way it should be, and that's just making it difficult for everybody.”
Knowing the FAFSA had been changed, Alondra Adin, 12, didn’t run into any hardships when completing the form.
“I knew that the FAFSA application had been changed this year to make it shorter and easier for applicants to fill out, and that put me more at ease because I figured it wouldn’t be as stressful to fill out,” said Adin. “I had no difficulty filling out the application this year. The website was very user friendly and straightforward which I appreciated.”
As the application opened up later than its usual October start date, Philips is concerned that seniors, submitting the application closer to the deadline won’t get financial aid packages in time to make college decisions.
“With our initiatives here, we are trying to push everyone to do it by March 2 so they are a month early just in case. I don’t want to leave it up into the hands of the college’s admissions to make sure they send everyone their packages in time,” said Philips.
In 2020, Congress signed the FAFSA Simplification Act into law to be rolled out for the 2024-25 school year, changing the application to make it simpler for families to fill out.
Even with the new changes, there have been problems with the website and a money miscalculation. According to an NPR article, students will possibly be receiving less federal financial aid as the Department of Education did not count inflation as a factor when budgeting for FAFSA. While they have stated they will fix the $1.8 billion mistake before the April 2 deadline, it is yet to be seen as for what will happen.
Many students such as Luke Jennings, 12, had not yet heard about the Department of Education’s mistake regarding financial aid money set aside for applicants and feels that with this mistake, it will affect students who need financial aid to help pay for college.
“I think with my current situation and my personal family makeup (and) with a lot of changes with income and money and stuff that's personally affected me, that inflation will compound to make that situation worse. I think that will apply for all seniors who are applying and it will only exacerbate the issues that have already appeared. I think it will just make them worse,” said Jennings.
In light of the later FAFSA application deadline, the California State University and University of California systems announced they have pushed their intent to register deadline to May 15, instead of May 1, giving students more time to get their financial aid packages before making their college decisions.
The simplified application has been open for over a month now and has been getting many mixed reactions from students, parents and others. DCAC college advisor Justin Philips feels that most of the changes made to the application have made it better, but website problems have been overshadowing the good that the changes are doing.
“Reducing the amount of questions from over 100 to 40 whatever it is, I think that's good. What I think the issue is (that) there are a whole bunch of glitches on the FAFSA website. Students and their parents (are) not being able to create an FSA ID (because) the website’s glitching,” said Philips. “If everything is working as it should be, then I think it’s pretty good. It's just what I’m experiencing is that more times than not, it's not working the way it should be, and that's just making it difficult for everybody.”
Knowing the FAFSA had been changed, Alondra Adin, 12, didn’t run into any hardships when completing the form.
“I knew that the FAFSA application had been changed this year to make it shorter and easier for applicants to fill out, and that put me more at ease because I figured it wouldn’t be as stressful to fill out,” said Adin. “I had no difficulty filling out the application this year. The website was very user friendly and straightforward which I appreciated.”
As the application opened up later than its usual October start date, Philips is concerned that seniors, submitting the application closer to the deadline won’t get financial aid packages in time to make college decisions.
“With our initiatives here, we are trying to push everyone to do it by March 2 so they are a month early just in case. I don’t want to leave it up into the hands of the college’s admissions to make sure they send everyone their packages in time,” said Philips.