FAFSA Student Aid Timeline Delayed, Complicating College Acceptance Process

An overhaul of the federal student aid application was supposed to make it simpler this year—instead the college acceptance process has been thrown into chaos as the changes have created delays. 

The Department of Education said Tuesday it will give schools data on Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) applications months later than it normally does: colleges now won’t get student financial aid information until early March, James Kvaal, Under Secretary of Education, said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. 

The department normally sends that information in October soon after applications open, but the rollout of a new, simplified application system has set the timeline back. The department only began accepting applications in January this year.

The delays are a result of overhauls made to the aid application system that were mandated by laws passed by Congress in 2019 and 2020. The overhauls were intended to make the FAFSA simpler, easier to use, and to make more lower-income students eligible for more aid. 

While the department said the application process has indeed become more streamlined and allowed people to qualify for more financial assistance, the delays have left college aid administrators wondering if students will get financial aid in time to make decisions about where to go to school.

“Moving the federal financial aid application into the 21st century isn’t a small endeavor, and we know how important the FAFSA is to millions of students and families and educators who serve them,” Kvaal said.

The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators said the “challenging” rollout of the new system threatened to harm the families it’s intended to help. 

“With this last-minute news, our nation’s colleges are once again left scrambling as they determine how best to work within these new timelines to issue aid offers as soon as possible. So the students who can least afford higher education aren’t the ones who ultimately pay the price for these missteps,” association president Justin Draeger said in a statement.

In addition to the delays, the new aid application system has been plagued by bugs that have left some students unable to apply at all. According to news reports and social media posts, parents have encountered websites that don’t load, buttons that don’t work, and various other frustrations as they’ve tried to apply for aid for next year.

The delay also means that applicants won’t be able to correct any mistakes on their submitted applications until March. Many colleges have application deadlines in February and March. As of Tuesday, it was unclear how the delay would affect college acceptance timelines, which typically end on May 1 when students must make their decision about where to enroll.

The changes, even with the growing pains, could end up benefitting many students. Because of the simplification, 610,000 more people will qualify for Pell grants for low-income students because of the new form, and almost 1.5 million more than before will qualify for the maximum amount of $7,395, the department said.

Among the modifications: removing questions asking how much money the applicant made as a clergy member, and automatically retrieving income information from the IRS so that people don’t have to dig through old tax forms to fill out their application. Some of the dozens of systems modernized during the process were 50 years old, Kvaal said, and its overall functioning has been much improved. 

“We’re hearing that people are able to complete the form in record time,” Kvaal said.

On social media, the feedback from applicants after the delay was announced was less than complimentary.

“Got accepted into some good schools which I was looking forward to just for these people to straight up sabotage these chances,” one user posted on Reddit’s FAFSA discussion page. “Like, people’s futures are on the line here.”