As the school year comes to an end, seniors are starting to accept colleges. Students put a hold on accepting college invitations until they knew that they knew that they could pay for using with aid or not. As of late 2023, about 57.6% of high schoolers are applying for financial aid to help assist themselves with payments for college. The night of the form’s release, approximately Oct. 1, students anticipated filling out their information for their aid. Though, that form didn’t open that night, nor did it open the next night. It eventually opened two months later in Dec. 2023. This is the event that caused several issues down the line.

After its creation in late 1992, FAFSA, as known as Free Application for Federal Student Aid, has provided students eligibility to receive financial aid for colleges. This gives students who are in a tight spot financially, a chance to attend college. Once the scheduled time for FAFSA applications to open up rolled around, they were not opened like they were supposed to be. It turns out, FAFSA had failed to make a new updated form for the year. 

In turn, FAFSA took a longer time to create a new form for 2024, this new form for each year is legally required by the FAFSA Simplification Act. The FAFSA Simplification Act is a law in which FAFSA has removed questions about sex, race, ethnicity, and drug convictions, which has nothing to do with the student’s eligibility for financial aid, as of late 2023. 

To the scholars’ relief, as a response, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Mar. 25, 2024, extending the deadline for the students’ submission of the form to June 30, 2024. So, even if students submit their forms past the previous deadline, Apr. 2, 2024, they will still be eligible.

There’s been over 17 million people applying for this aid, and over 10 million people receiving since its first upload. Also, in regards to Assembly bill 469, a bill specifically in regards to financial aid,“all California seniors are required to complete a financial aid application whether it’s through FAFSA or the California Dream Act Application,” said Yvette Aguirre, Millikan’s College and Career specialist. So this delay has taken a toll on several bunches of people as the delivery of all information relating to finances is delayed. 

Students every year wait to accept college invitations before knowing if they can pay for it or not with the help of FAFSA. Some schools, like Wesleyan University in Connecticut, have policies where they can’t award these invitations without receiving updated financial information. Also, as a result of this delay, students won’t be able to exchange their information with the IRS due to the yearly form not being released on its stated date, Oct. 1, 2023.

Students won’t be able to give their financial information on time, so their schools of interest won’t receive it on time, causing lots of people involved to fall behind. 

“I heard that there was going to be a delay, but I expected it to be about a month’s wait, not right before college decisions were due. I filled out the form in December of last year but didn’t start receiving scholarships until a couple weeks ago,” said Sydney Harmon, a COMPASS senior. 

Along with the delays, once the results from FAFSA finally come in, families may be surprised on how much or how little aid they’re actually eligible for and have possibly made decisions that they can’t foot the bill for. 

“This is frustrating because we’ve known about this rollout for quite some time. And they had what looked like a very long ramp for the changes in the FAFSA and they are missing their target by months,” says Nat Smitobol, a college admissions counselor, to U.S. News. on March 25, 2024.

Despite the good news, still remain alert on any deadlines changes you might have regarding your desired college. “Although the federal deadline has been changed to late June, certain colleges in California have their own deadlines set on for how long they will be accepting FAFSA information from students,” according to studentaid.gov, a website related to college financial aid. 

Now that a new deadline has been made, June 30, 2024, everything appears to be smooth sailing from where we are, or at least it seems. Now that one of the biggest issues has been resolved, there’s still minor hiccups amongst the new form. 

Some of FAFSA’s applicants without a SSN run into an error message on the site when filing. So far, it’s not clear on why this issue is occurring. Applicants who have faced this issue are suggested to insert their financial information manually and report to the department’s site, where they could receive updates on this issue’s timeline. 

For any additional concerns or questions, you can locate the 2024-24 FAFSA site for several documents that relate to the topic of your concern.