By Penelope Day
By late February, senior Robin Manitsky had still not begun her FAFSA.
Manitsky knew that the form, which determines students’ eligibility for financial aid, had been released at the end of December. She also knew that filling out the FAFSA before college’s deadlines would be critical for her ability to receive aid.
But due to a litany of glitches, changes, and delays in the 2023-2024 FAFSA, Manitsky and her family felt discouraged by the task.
“Word has been out that because everyone has been trying to do it at the same time, and figuring it out because it’s new, it’s been crashing,” Manitsky said on February 29th. “So [my family] is waiting until March, which I know is like tomorrow, to do it. Then, hopefully, there will be fewer people.”
Manitsky is far from the only student to feel daunted by the changing landscape of this year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid, more commonly known as the FAFSA.
In an effort to encourage more students to seek financial aid, the US Department of Education overhauled the formula used for federal student aid since last school year, when the FAFSA Simplification Act was passed. The new formula was supposed to make the FAFSA simpler to fill out and make more students eligible for aid.
But according to news site Inside Higher Ed, the FAFSA’s changes have made applying for financial aid anything but easy. While the form typically releases in October, students this year could not access the form until December 30th. Even then, the FAFSA was still in a “soft launch” phase, with students only able to access the form online for a few glitch-filled hours a day.
Murrowite Maya Bobadilla said she struggled to fill out the FAFSA during its soft launch.
“[The website] was always under maintenance, and I had to go in only at certain times to make sure that it was working,” Bobadilla said. “So whenever I did have free time I wasn’t able to work on it because the website was always shut down.”
Senior Uta Seliverstov also faced numerous technical difficulties while trying to submit the FAFSA.
“When I filled out the form, it was pretty easy to navigate the website,” Seliverstov said. “However, at the end, when I needed to submit my signature, the form refreshed and got submitted without my signature. I got an email stating that I need to wait for my form to process before I can make any changes to it, so I’m currently waiting on that.”
As an additional hurdle for both students and colleges, the Department of Education announced at the end of January that no Institutional Student Information Records (ISIR) would be sent to colleges until late March. According to CNN, this drastic delay could prevent seniors from receiving financial aid offers from colleges until weeks after their acceptance letters — possibly making it difficult for students to commit to a college before the typical May 1st deadline.
“I feel like it’s frustrating, because some people depend on if they can go to a certain college based on financial aid. So this just delays the whole process,” said senior Emma Almaz, referring to the FAFSA’s delay in sending student data until March.
Almaz added that the delays have significantly impacted her level of certainty surrounding the college process.
“For certain colleges, I had a mindset on when I would know, but now I don’t know when I’m going to get the college’s [financial aid] back,” Almaz said. “And there are certain deadlines too for me to even accept the college.”
The deadlines for students to apply for financial aid at many colleges have already passed, forcing colleges to scramble to inform applicants of changing due dates and application policies. But Manitsky has yet to receive updates from the colleges she applied to about how they’re handling FAFSA’s delays.
“Colleges have sent me stuff talking about the FAFSA, in terms of like ‘hey, you should fill this out.’ But nothing in terms of the delays,” she said.
Manitsky said she had not even been informed about the FAFSA’s delay, by either the U.S. Dept. of Education or any college she applied to.
“I honestly didn’t know that the FAFSA wasn’t sending data [until March]. I think it’s probably OK, although with acceptances it’ll probably be a little weird to have financial aid come later. I think for the waiting game it would be better to have them simultaneously, so it’s not like ‘oh, I got this’ and then ‘now, I gotta wait for this.”
Almaz lamented that colleges had not updated her on when she could expect to receive financial aid packages.
“I actually got accepted to many colleges, but they never told me anything about financial aid,” Almaz said. “They just told me to fill [the FAFSA] out. . . so I’m still waiting on that.”
Many Murrow seniors feel that financial aid offers will play an important role in their college decisions.
“Financial aid will play a really large role in my college decision because I don’t want to have a lot of student debt,” Seliverstov said. “I feel like receiving financial aid offers later than college decision will impact my ability to make a timely decision since I might get accepted to my dream college, but later be discouraged after finding out that I did not get enough financial aid to be able to attend it. Knowing how much financial aid I will receive earlier would help prevent that.”
Likewise, Bobadilla stated that she thought delayed financial aid packages would impact her ability to make an educated college choice.
“I think it’s annoying,” she said in response to the FAFSA’s delay. “It’s easier to have financial aid information sooner so that you can make a well thought-out decision.”
Bobadilla also expressed concern about not receiving sufficient financial aid due to the FAFSA’s new formula, which among other factors, no longer considers students’ siblings in their expected family contribution.
“I don’t have any siblings in college, but I do have a lot of younger siblings who will be going to college,” Bobadilla said. “So I feel like siblings are a good factor to consider when giving financial aid, because if a parent has more kids it’s obviously going to cost more.”
Above all, students who will be the first in their family to attend college in the United States face additional barriers when navigating the new FAFSA, from a glitch that prevented parents without Social Security numbers from filling out the digital form for weeks to a general lack of guidance at home when filling out the form’s questions.
Seliverstov considers herself a first generation student in the U.S., and found filling out the FAFSA to be unfamiliar territory for her family.
“Being first generation has impacted my experience navigating financial aid applications since I can’t ask my parents about what to expect. Though I can ask my college counselor and other people at school about FAFSA, being able to ask someone who knows what they are doing while completing the financial aid forms at home would have made the process less stressful.”
While navigating the FAFSA’s changes, many Murrowites have sought out the support of the school’s College and Career Office more.
“I was able to go to the College Office to ask questions if I didn’t know how to respond or fill in certain parts,” Bobadilla said.
Manitsky expressed her frustration towards the Department of Education for the delays, urging them to resolve the FAFSA’s technical difficulties soon.
“Make sure your servers can handle this many people,” she said. “Apparently, that seems to be everyone’s main issue.”
(Cover image courtesy of Inside Higher Ed)
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