The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) has created a dream and a nightmare for students and parents applying to receive financial aid.
This year, FAFSA promised a completely new form that benefits families and takes significantly less time to complete. In prior years, the FAFSA had over 120 questions, but this year the application was trimmed down to around 30-40 questions.
“The U.S. government made a law called the FAFSA Simplification Act in 2020,” Beth Miller, the financial aid counselor at Calvin University, said. “They told the U.S. Department of Education to redo the FAFSA process to simplify it and to provide more ways for students to become eligible for financial aid. The US Department of Education over the last three to four years has made some changes to abide by that law and the final change was to redo the FAFSA. This was the first time FAFSA had been redone in over 40 years.”
Making the form simpler has lowered the time needed to complete it, where students can fill it out in as little as ten minutes. FAFSA has also made the tax process easier for students to submit, allowing families not to search for previous tax information to fill out the form.
“This year they have made IRS and tax information easier so that the IRS will find it for you, while in previous years families would have to fill it by themselves,” Elle Burgess, a counselor at the high school, said.
Although this change has had its benefits, it has had drawbacks, such as releasing the form on Dec. 31 when in prior years it was released in October. They also made errors in the formula they use.
“The government said that they were recreating FAFSA to look at the rate of inflation, and using that rate of inflation, they would use it to see the financial need families had,” Miller said. “Someone found out that inflation had not been part of the calculation, so it’s been delayed because now even though they created everything, the formula has to be redone for that rate of inflation, which has caused a delay. Because of the formula change, the financial aid information won’t be available to colleges until March, which is late.”
Not giving students financial aid packages until March puts families at a disadvantage since many students decide on what school they want to attend based on the cost of attending a specific college. Additionally, FAFSA has also changed its process for taking into account other students in a household attending university.
“The FAFSA form this year does not provide additional aid for families sending more than one student in schools which puts families that are sending multiple kids to school at a disadvantage,” Kersten Sykes ‘24 said.
The FAFSA process has left students feeling mixed emotions about the form since it is easier but it pushes on the May 1 deadline for students to commit to college.
“Sending it out late this year added a lot more stress, but I like that they simplified the process,” Abby Osterhart ‘24 said.
Although the process has families feeling a variety of ways, there are still some options for students anxious about not having aid yet.
“Students can apply for scholarships that East Grand Rapids High School offers,” Burgess said. “This year we have created an Excel sheet for local and national scholarships as well as our East Grand Rapids School Foundation scholarships. You can look at the scholarship name, eligibility, requirements, and the timeline for the scholarship. Students can also look to the financial aid office of the school they want to attend, and even pick up the phone and talk to someone there.”
The FAFSA this year has been a whirlwind of emotions, but very soon families will be granted aid and can finally make college decisions.
