ST. LOUIS — If you know a college student awaiting word about financial aid, you're not alone. Challenges with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, are leading to delays on when colleges can award scholarships. It finds a local university now thinking outside of the box.
"This is a time that should be full of joy and hope and possibility and not the anxiety and fear people are feeling,” Faith Sandler with the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis said.
A newly revised FAFSA is supposed to be available for college students in need of financial help.
"A number of people can't even complete it, through no fault of their own,” Sandler said.
She said glitches in the federal system are causing headaches -- delaying colleges form being able to notify students of how much money they could get, something that could mean the difference on which college a prospective student chooses or whether a student can return to campus.
"Typically, most schools are sending out all of those financial aid letters students need (by) March (or) April,” Sandler said.
That's after the school receives a student's FAFSA information from the government. Right now, the government is saying it won't be able to send that information over until March.
"This is going to compress into a very tight window the most important financial decision of their lives,” she added.
"We’ve decided to take matters into our own hands,” said Rob Reddy of Saint Louis University.
There, administrators are sidestepping the FAFSA for now and creating an internal application.
"We will mimic the federal application. We will be able to provide an award that we will stand behind and when a family can file a FAFSA, we will ask them to do that,” Reddy said. SLU's goal is to notify students by the end of this month how much money they'll qualify for. "I’ve never seen this much disruption in the aid application process in my entire career…I think our students are stressed out. Our parents are stressed out…We are here to help families get through this difficult time."
Since not every school is doing this, families everywhere find themselves praying hoping wont be left in the dark.
"For students who can't afford to cover the whole cost, this is everything… It's as though we’re asking an 18-year-old to sign a mortgage that they aren't qualified for and isn't going to cover the cost of the house they purchased,” Sandler said.
She encouraged students to be patient and stick with the process. She advised prospective students not to commit to a school right now that they can’t afford, without having assurance of the financial help that will be available.
Friday, 5 On Your Side heard from two other universities.
“At this time, we are still estimating that we will be able to go out with official aid offer notifications to prospective students by mid-April. However, very soon, we plan to launch an updated Net Price Calculator where students can access an unofficial estimate of their financial aid package at Mizzou,” Christian Basi of the University of Missouri said in an email.
Michelle Trame of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said in an email, “Like all universities, we’re concerned with the delay, and we know students and families rely on this aid information to make their decisions about their college choices. As we wait for guidance from the Department of Education, we are exploring ways to offer as much flexibility as possible to admitted students. It’s important to note that we cannot complete financial aid packages until we receive a student’s FAFSA information.”