By Sevanah Sandoval
This past year, December 31st not only represented the night before the New Year, but also the day that the “better” FAFSA was finally launched. As of Tuesday, January 9th, over one million students and families have filled out the shortened FAFSA (CNBC) without any array of issues.
Perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of the FAFSA is the fact that it wasn’t immediately available starting on the promised launch date. Instead, the soft launch made accessing the form at any point a gamble, with the site only allowing forms to be filled out at unannounced, intermittent times. According to the FAFSA site, the soft launch period was used to “monitor site performance, conduct pauses for maintenance, and make updates to improve the user experience for students and families.” While this is important, it made trying to find time to fill out the form before fast-approaching deadlines challenging.
As expected with the launch of a changed FAFSA, many glitches and problems have occurred. There is a list of common glitches that people are encountering with ways to work around them on the 2024-25 FAFSA Issues Alert page. The list isn’t perfect, however, as many issues have no solution. The issues with no solution all explain that the student facing the issue will be able to fill out the form once the issue is resolved, with no additional insight into when or how this may happen. Such issues include a student with no social security number exiting the form before entering their state of legal residency being unable to complete the form and parents without a social security number being unable to contribute to a student’s form.
President of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators Justin Draeger has commented on the rollout of the FAFSA, explaining that “[s]tudents, families, and financial aid administrators who have been waiting for this release for months are understandably frustrated” (CNBC). Draeger further commented that because the Department of Education has not specified when schools will receive FAFSA information from applicants, extra stress is being placed on students and families as they face the prospect of comparing financial aid offers and possibilities without fully knowing what is available to them. Further, according to CNBC, the FAFSA rollout could potentially force colleges to push back the college decision deadline of May 1st, creating new issues with a “domino effect.”
Luckily, the soft launch period ended on Wednesday, January 10th, with the form being open 24/7 (USA Today). So, time to apply!
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