Dealing With FAFSA Glitches and Confusion? Here’s What You Can Do

The redesigned 2024-25 Free Utility for Federal Pupil Assist (FAFSA) is now obtainable across the clock, following a weeklong delicate launch, throughout which the shape was open for as little as half-hour a day. Though the brand new kind is less complicated and shorter, college students and households are nonetheless contending with technical glitches, modified processes and complicated questions.

“There have been some bumps within the street in phrases of accessibility and performance,” says Steve Colón, CEO of Backside Line, a university entry group that works with first-generation college students from low-income backgrounds in New York Metropolis, Boston, Chicago and Ohio. “On the optimistic facet, we have heard that for some college students it is taking about 20 minutes to finish the FAFSA, which is wildly totally different from what it was earlier than.” In recent times, finishing the FAFSA might take an hour or longer.

Consultants urge college students to submit the brand new FAFSA as quickly as doable, since some varieties of monetary assist have precedence deadlines or draw from a restricted pool. About 1 million college students have submitted the brand new FAFSA as of Jan. 8, in accordance with U.S. Schooling Division information. That’s roughly 6% of the 17 million who sometimes submit the shape annually.

Perplexed about one thing on the brand new FAFSA? Listed below are its 5 most-confusing elements, and techniques to cope with them — so you may submit your kind ASAP.

Technical glitches on the FAFSA could be irritating. For instance, some customers report getting repeatedly logged out earlier than they’ll end their kind. In case you encounter points like this, it’s OK to take a break and are available again to the shape a bit later.

“There’s not an enormous rush on filling it out at the moment versus tomorrow,” says Karen McCarthy, vp of public coverage and federal relations on the Nationwide Affiliation of Pupil Monetary Assist Directors. “So it’s doable to come back again in a number of days, and hopefully, a few of these glitches will probably be labored out by that cut-off date.”

Different glitches stay baked into the shape. For instance, some college names are getting lower off on the FAFSA. This may be complicated if a college you’d prefer to ship your FAFSA to has a number of campuses. If this occurs, college students can do an web seek for a college’s Federal College Code, and use that quantity to tug it up within the FAFSA.

The state of affairs is evolving daily. The most recent record of identified FAFSA glitches and workarounds is obtainable on StudentAid.gov.

In case you submitted your portion of the FAFSA however realized you made an error, you’ll have to attend a number of weeks till you may repair it.

College students will obtain an e-mail with their FAFSA Submission Abstract — which particulars submitted solutions, Pell Grant eligibility and their Pupil Assist Index — as soon as the Division of Schooling processes their accomplished kind, which is slated to start out in late January. Then, you may make any essential corrections to your submitted solutions.

Even should you make a correction in a while, it gained’t change the submission time stamp in your FAFSA, McCarthy says. This may very well be vital for college kids making use of for monetary assist that’s first come, first served or that has an early software deadline.

“If a correction is made on January 30, that software date is just not up to date to January 30. It nonetheless information when the FAFSA was initially filed,” McCarthy says.

There’s a brand new course of for undocumented mother and father to request an FSA ID this yr — however it’s not working but, and there’s no timeline for when it will likely be. Till this difficulty is fastened, college students whose mother and father don’t have Social Safety numbers (SSNs) can not submit the FAFSA.

Taking a while to get organized now can assist you full the FAFSA extra simply as soon as it’s obtainable. In case you’re a mother or father with out an SSN, proceed to achieve out to help buildings, like faculty entry organizations or college counselors, Colón says.

“The second that the software turns into obtainable, it’s important to get in there and get began,” says Colón. “Whereas it’s a vastly simplified kind, it isn’t going to be for college kids whose mother and father haven’t got an SSN, so it is going to be actually vital that they get all their monetary paperwork prepared as quickly as doable to give themselves the time they might want to full the shape.”

This yr, college students and fogeys fill out and submit their related portion of the FAFSA individually. Both the scholar begins and completes their portion of the FAFSA and “invitations” the mother or father, or a mother or father can begin and full their part, then they invite the scholar.

That’s totally different from previous years, when a dependent pupil and their mother and father needed to sit down collectively and fill out a single kind.

“It’s a role-based course of, the place it was not earlier than,” says Jodi Vanden Berge, director of faculty planning and outreach at EducationQuest, a Nebraska-based faculty entry nonprofit.

Although the brand new FAFSA is usually extra easy than in years previous, debtors have reported that a number of questions are complicated or unclear. Listed below are two to be careful for:

This has proved complicated, since some college districts launched free and decreased lunch applications for all college students, no matter their household’s monetary state of affairs, throughout the pandemic.

Below the federal advantages query — At any time throughout 2022 or 2023, did the scholar or anybody of their household obtain advantages from any of the next federal applications? — “free or reduced-price college lunch” is an possibility.

If a pupil obtained free or decreased lunch, whatever the circumstances, they need to point out that on the FAFSA, says Vanden Berge.

Some college students have reported confusion about this new query used to ascertain dependency: Are the scholar’s mother and father unwilling to offer their info, however the pupil doesn’t have an uncommon circumstance that forestalls them from contacting or acquiring their mother and father’ info?

If a pupil selects “sure” — that they do not wish to present mother or father info — then, the mother or father cannot fill out their part of the FAFSA, Vanden Berge says. This might disqualify a pupil from most federal monetary assist, other than direct unsubsidized loans, that means they’ll’t entry grants, work-study or sponsored loans, which don’t accrue curiosity whereas they’re at school.

In case you do make a mistake, keep in mind which you could request a correction as soon as your kind is processed.