Families Stressed About College Aid Lose Patience as Outages Add to Application Delays

A long-awaited overhaul of the federal government’s online college aid application is making a rocky debut. 

This past weekend families forced to wait three months longer than normal to fill out the online FAFSA form were told that the new version, promised by Dec. 31, would only be accessible for “short periods of time” while tweaks continue to be made. 

Complaints on social media indicated many had been unsuccessfully trying to complete the application for hours if not days but had been shut out or kicked out midway through because of what the U.S. Education Department is now calling a “soft launch.” 

These outages have been particularly frustrating because families with college-bound kids were already feeling behind schedule on the stressful task. Not being able to apply for financial aid on Oct. 1, per usual, has made it harder to deal with individual college deadlines and tougher to determine which schools they can afford, online posts indicated.

“This is not a soft launch in my opinion this is a failure to launch!!!!” read one post on the Facebook page of the Education Department’s Office of Federal Student Aid. 

“This is just so dysfunctional! Normally it is Oct 1st. There have been 90 additional days to get this together. We are all just so stressed and anxious,” another Facebook post on the site read.

For its part, the Education Department is telling applicants who try to access the form during a “planned pause” to check back later and not feel rushed to complete the application because it won’t even be sending the eligibility information to the colleges they’re considering until late January.

“During the soft launch we will be initiating pauses to the site, during which time the form will not be available while our team makes improvements,” the FSA office wrote on its website. “Students and families will have ample time to complete the 2024-25 FAFSA, and do not need to rush to fill out the form immediately.”

The FSA also said that leading up to and during the soft launch, it had “uncovered some minor issues affecting users at various points in the application process.” These issues are being addressed “concurrently,” the office said.

The FAFSA — or Free Application for Federal Student Aid — determines eligibility for all federal financial aid, including grants, loans and work-study programs, and it must be renewed each year. Over 13 million students who file a FAFSA get more than $120 billion in federal aid annually, according to the College Board. It’s also used by many colleges and state governments that offer their own aid. 

The new version, authorized under 2021 and 2022 federal appropriations bills passed by bipartisan majorities of Congress, marks the most ambitious and significant revision since the 1980s, according to the Education Department.

It modifies both form and substance, simplifying the application process and changing how eligibility for aid is calculated.

Among the biggest changes, it increases access to Federal Pell Grants, revises how income and assets are factored into financial need formulas, and removes any consideration of the number of children attending college in a single family.

It also gives financial aid offices at individual colleges more latitude to accommodate extenuating circumstances, relies on federal tax information received directly from the IRS, and reduces the number of questions asked.

Some on social media said the exhausting process of trying to complete the application undermined any simplifications or improvements. Many urged others to "hang in there” and shared tips on when the site was working.

Some celebrated completing the application with screenshots saying as much. Others resented that they were no longer on their holiday break from school or work, since the task at hand was so time-consuming.

“I am a parent trying to help my senior navigate through this college mess,” wrote a Reddit user. “This is a debacle. I don't care if you vote Dem or Rep, this is an absolute failure by the DOE. Pissed off big time!”

Even before the outages, opening the application three months later than usual was expected to cause delays in the entire admission process. Colleges and universities use the FAFSA to create a financial aid award letter outlining eligibility for various forms of aid and the ultimate cost to attend.

These offers probably won’t go out until late February or March at the earliest, the National College Attainment Network, a nonprofit focused on underrepresented and low-income students, said at the end of November.

New York Times columnist Ron Lieber, who has a college-bound kid, chronicled his own experience trying to apply on New Year’s Eve, noting that “it didn’t go well.” After checking regularly over six hours, he was able to open the application, but didn’t get very far because one of the buttons didn’t work. 

Lieber said although he has sympathy for the staff at the Education Department, which probably worked through Christmas on the “enormous task,” he would have managed the rollout differently.

“I wish they’d waited another year and gotten this right by late in the summer, so everyone could have a full academic-year cycle to get used to the new form and formulas for determining aid,” Lieber wrote in Monday’s edition of the Times.

“It’s too late for that, alas, so I’ll keep flinging myself at this thing as if this was Ticketmaster and Beyoncé tickets were on the line. Luckily, federal student loan funds don’t run out, let alone as fast as stadium seats disappear.”