The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is filled out yearly by students across the country. The FAFSA form for the 2024-2025 school year, however, ran into a multitude of issues, upsetting many students and parents. In previous years, the form would be available to be filled out by Oct. 1. This year’s form, on the other hand, was not open until December of 2023, which is quite a long delay. Initially, this was not seen as an incredibly large issue, being that these delays were caused by new and improved changes to the application process. Despite the changes, some students found the form very excruciating and even confusing to complete.
“It was a total pain to complete. When I would turn it in, I would get sent back and it would make me start over,” senior Zachery Wynn said.
As if the 2024-25 FAFSA was not already causing enough problems in the beginning, many students have had even more trouble with it recently. It was initially determined that students would receive the results of their financial loan, scholarships and grants by January of 2024. However, many people who applied, especially in Freedom, still have yet to receive any information from FAFSA. Many students have forms that seem to be “In Review” for far too long, some students have encountered error messages with seemingly no fix and many students have even contacted the financial aid email for help and complaints with no response. Since financial aid was delayed so much, most colleges did at least extend their commitment deadline, but this extension still is not enough for many students.
These issues and delays have an even bigger effect on students than what might be seen on the surface. One of the biggest problems with the FAFSA delays is the fact that financial aid heavily impacts a student’s school choice. Many people have to plan their future based on thefinancial aid they recieve. Without seeing the results from FAFSA, a student can not fully determine how much it will cost them to pursue a post-secondary education, especially because colleges can not present students with their full financial aid package without information from the FAFSA. This could either force students to miss out on attending their preferred school due to the risk of it costing too much or cause them to commit to a school without knowing how much money they will have to pay.
“There is a lot of uncertainty because I don’t know my scholarship amounts until I receive that information,” senior Morgan Keller said.
The FAFSA application should be easy to complete, correct and assess. The issues that accompanied this year’s form have caused far too much unneeded stress for already anxious students. Many would agree that more improvement with federal financial aid is imperative in the future.