What St. Louis-area universities are doing to help families amid FAFSA delays
Financial aid delays are affecting both universities and families, but experts said not to give up hope.
Current and prospective college students are still struggling with applications for federal student aid, and it is slow going on the university's end to receive those forms.
This comes after a major overhaul of the FAFSA program.
“This is the biggest overhaul to the federal financial aid system and, clearly, the application in more than 50 years," Saint Louis University Vice President of Enrollment Management Rob Reddy said. "While I don't want to speak for the department, it has been a big undertaking, a massive project. And it has had technological calculation problems along the way. I've heard that there have been some resource problems, also in terms of the Department of Education, having adequate staff and resources to make such a massive overhaul to the national aid application system."
At this point, many families don’t have the results to make the best decision on where to send their students to school.
Parkway South parent Stacey Burian said it took from December to March to file a FAFSA application for her daughter, who is set to graduate in May.
“It took us that long between phone calls to try and get a hold of somebody at FAFSA, somebody to be able to give us the information to help us. She had to restart our application maybe seven or eight times,” Burian said.
And now, they’re playing the waiting game. She was accepted to three schools, including SLU. While all of the schools have been understanding of the issue, they’re all on different timelines.
“We are also getting emails from school saying, ‘Hey, you're downpayment’s due.’ Well, we don't know what that is. And we don't know if she's going there yet,” Burian said.
Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University is trying to take the guesswork out of this for families by providing their own financial aid tool. That application collects the same information as the FAFSA.
For example, if their data shows the student will likely get $1,000 from the government and SLU will provide another $1,000, they’ll get a $2,000 financial aid award.
“We then ultimately do get the FAFSA information, which we do have to have, and the federal grant is only $950, we'll make that SLU grant $1050. So that the family is held harmless, it's still a $2,000 award,” Reddy said.
SLU hopes families can make a decision by May 1, which is the typical decision deadline, but there is flexibility.
“We understand that you may not feel comfortable doing that. Please get a hold of us and talk to an admission counselor or a representative in financial aid," Reddy said. "We will support you., We will provide you with some additional time if necessary because we want you to make the best decision, not the fastest decision."
Reddy said while the government system seems operating better than it was three months ago, there are still major delays.
“We looked at our FAFSA data last year. By about this time one year ago, we had received over 20,000 FAFSAs. To date, we have received about 5,000. That's a pretty big difference,” Reddy said.
Families who want to use SLU’s financial aid tool can click here to fill it out and find contact information for representatives who can help.
Webster University
Webster University is actively trying to work with families by letting go of the typical deadlines and is even hosting workshops to help.
“So we've pretty much done away with our priority deadlines," Webster University Director of Financial Aid Jennifer Bell said. "And we're accommodating students to provide them the aid that they would receive if they would have applied early in a normal year."
Bell said so far, the school has received 2,500 FAFSAs from the government, but they were only able to process roughly 320 because the others require corrections or had issues.
“Our message to students is just get in there and attempt. And if you need some assistance, we're here for you. Just pop in the office, and our staff is on standby,” Bell said.
Click here for Webster University’s financial aid department.
University of Missouri-St. Louis
The University of Missouri-St. Louis doesn’t have a hard deadline, but it adjusted scholarship deadlines because of the delays.
UMSL Director of Student Financial Services Mitch Hess said these adjustments are especially important for families who have to make corrections to their FAFSA.
“Once those corrections happen, that doesn't necessarily mean that the schools are going to be getting that information right away. So there still could be further delays at that point,” Hess said.
Hess said from the communications they’ve received, students still aren’t able to make those corrections online.
“From what we understand, that should be available sometime in the first half of April, which is how the department has defined a lot of those dates in a kind of nonspecific way,” Hess said.
Click here for UMSL’s financial aid department.
Planning Ahead
Burian said even though she and her daughter are holding out hope to get financial aid information in time, they’re also planning ahead.
“Maybe we consider a year at a community college until they can figure this out. You can get some Gen Ed's out of the way, and then, try and go back to a bigger university program,” Burian said.
For any families that are struggling, universities said to reach out to them as soon as possible. Many schools have FAFSA workshops online and in person, so you can get individual help directly.
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