Every year, more than 17 million students rely on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to help cover the cost of college with federal loans and grants.
But this year’s troubled rollout of the revamped FAFSA slowed things down for many college hopefuls.
In Wisconsin, nearly 9% fewer high school students and other first-time applicants submitted a FAFSA — with the largest decline among lower-income students.
Fernanda Becerra is a sophomore at Marquette University who struggled with FAFSA delays for months.
“For something that was supposed to be the new and better FAFSA, it was way harder, took way longer, and gave me so many months of constant anxiety,” she says. “[I wondered] how am I going to pay for school if FAFSA doesn't help me?”
October is the traditional start of the FAFSA cycle, which gives students ample time to apply for aid. It also gives colleges time to review applications and decide how much each student should pay. Instead of being ready in October 2023, the FAFSA release was postponed until January 2024, and even then the application had issues that needed to be fixed.
That meant students and colleges were put on a tighter timeline, as they waited for the FAFSA’s glitches to be resolved.
Becerra, a first-generation student, wasn’t able to submit her application until July. Colleges usually send out financial aid offers between November and January.
“I can’t just pay $12,000 out of pocket out of nowhere,” Becerra says. “If I didn't get FAFSA, I'd have to … go into debt, and that's an even bigger worry because I already know that for law school, I'm probably going to have to go into debt. So knowing that this early on I [might] have to go [into debt] was really just a big stress, and I didn't want to put that on my parents either.”
Becerra says she felt discouraged numerous times but never seriously considered dropping out. Instead, she applied for scholarships and reached out to College Possible Wisconsin for help.
College Possible Wisconsin is a nonprofit that helps low-income students prepare for college and throughout the completion of their degree. With the FAFSA in turmoil, the nonprofit launched a statewide initiative over the summer to help families understand and complete the application.
“The fact that we were still working on financial aid in July and August, and even now, I would say we’ve still got some students that are trickling in,” says Marco Morrison, the nonprofit's executive director. “It's just been a huge delay in a student's ambition and motivation to go on this journey, which we know is not easy, and at the foundation of it, it's expensive.”
Becerra says her mom doesn’t have a Social Security Number, which wasn’t an issue when filling out the FAFSA in the past. Instead, they used her mom’s Individual Taxpayer Identification Number.
“Once you click the, ‘I do not have a Social Security’ [button] and start filling out with your name and phone number, the website would just crash,” Becerra says. “You couldn’t even get through the application. I couldn’t even send my mom the invitation to make an account. Something that said it would take 30 minutes to send took like three days.”
But with the support of a FAFSA specialist with College Possible Wisconsin, Becerra says she was able to troubleshoot the application and finally apply for aid in time for fall classes.
“I was able to help one of my friends by sending her down to College Possible,” she says. “She was able to get FAFSA, but she was on the verge of dropping out because [college] was just too much money.”
Becerra says she worries about other students who struggled to fill out the FAFSA this year and hopes the application improves next year.
“I know a lot of my mom’s friends whose daughters were also in school just decided not to go again this year because the [application] was too tricky,” she says. “There are parents who don’t know how to use a computer or understand English, and the [FAFSA] questions were too tricky to understand — that was the biggest problem for a lot of my friends.”
For the second year in a row, the U.S. Department of Education has decided to delay the form’s launch. Even today, the Department of Education is still processing FAFSA applications for the 2024-2025 school year.
Morrison of College Possible Wisconsin says the long-term effects of this issue are already being felt.
“There’s already some opposition to whether or not a college degree is even worth it these days,” he says. “So I think that the overall threat is not just because of financial aid, but that it is compounding the issues that higher ed is already facing – cost, cutting faculty, cutting programs, etc. – and if we don't get in front of it, then I think that the ultimate concern is that students will not see college as a viable option for their future. Which, for all of us who have earned a degree, we know the value of it.”
Becerra, an aspiring criminal defense lawyer, says other students can learn this from her FAFSA experience: prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.
“If you're in high school, start getting ahead of it right now and start looking for resources,” she says. “Definitely [apply] for more scholarships… in case you're not able to get FAFSA [aid], because it is still a big possibility. And College Possible is always there to help.”
