ST. LOUIS — Many questions can pop up when filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA during any given year. But, parents and students will likely face even more confusion while filing the 2024-2025 forms.
On Monday, financial aid experts are holding an event for St. Louis area families to help tackle the new FAFSA application process. FAFSA announced the discovery of another error with its online platform that is causing delays for prospective students.
The error discovery makes the FAFSA workshop crucial for families on Monday night.
From 5-6 p.m. on Monday, advisors from the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis will be available to help tackle the new FAFSA application process and explain some upcoming deadlines. The event will happen at the Legacy Center at 6850 Normandale Drive in north St. Louis County.
There will likely be many questions in the wake of the recent revelation with FAFSA.
There's now another error in FAFSA's online application system.
According to NBC News, the Department of Education's Federal Student Aid Office, which administers the FAFSA application, announced Friday that its system didn’t include all data fields to correctly calculate aid based on the assets students reported. The office said it has been sending out inaccurate information as recently as Thursday.
The Department of Education said the error has impacted roughly 200,000 applications out of the more than 1.5 million it has already processed, leading to a delay in financial aid award distributions.
This delay also impacts students' ability to choose which college they can afford to attend.
The affected applications have to be reprocessed and resent to schools and, according to DOE officials, there's no exact timeline of how long this could take. But, officials do say the error has since been resolved.
Usually, prospective college students would be getting their financial aid award letters sometime during March, and colleges typically ask for a decision on fall semester attendance by May 1. But, because of the FAFSA problems, colleges are pushing back decision dates and enrollment timelines.
According to NBC News, authorities have advised schools to use applicants’ Student Aid Index number, which can estimate an applicant’s possible aid amount, to create tentative financial aid packages rather than wait for delayed FAFSA forms to be fully processed.
Problems have plagued the FAFSA site since last December, when the platform relaunched to make "applying easier than ever" by reducing the number of questions and aiming to streamline the process.
However, the platform changes have caused more frustration. The website launched on Dec. 30, 2024. Applications usually open in October, so the window was delayed from the start.
In addition, users had trouble accessing the site for more than an hour at a time when it first launched. The site wasn't available to use 24/7 until Jan. 8, 2024.
Previously, FAFSA applications could take hours or days to process. But, since December, millions of people have waited up to several months to receive their financial aid award letters.
About six million students have filled out the FAFSA so far this year. That number is down drastically from the 17 million applications the DOE typically processes.