Delayed release of updated FAFSA causes headaches for Fort Worth-area high school seniors

When this year’s high school seniors apply for federal student aid, they’ll see a form that is considerably shorter, simpler and easier to understand than it was in years past.

But they won’t see it for a few more weeks. Last month, federal education officials announced that the newly redesigned Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, won’t be released until Dec. 31, about three months after students typically get access to the form.

Complicating matters further for counselors in Texas is the fact that the state is three years into a requirement that all graduating seniors fill out the form, whether they plan to go to college or not. That new state law, combined with the delayed release date, means counselors need to help record numbers of students fill out the application, and do so in half the time they typically have.

College readiness staffers from high schools in the Fort Worth area say the change will ultimately be good for students. In the meantime, though, the delay will make the spring semester more complicated for everyone.

“More kids will qualify for aid, and it will be quicker and easier for them,” said Bobby Moore, director of college and career readiness for the Northwest Independent School District. “This year is just going to be a little stressful for us.”

FAFSA redesign streamlines process, simplifies language

The redesigned form is intended to ease the process of applying for financial aid, simplifying the language on the application and paring it down to fewer than 20 questions instead of more than 100. As a part of that process, the U.S. Department of Education is also revamping the way student aid is calculated, expanding eligibility for Pell Grants. Following the changes, about 50,000 more Texas students will receive Pell Grant money, and about 132,000 more Texas students will receive the maximum award.

But the process of redesigning the form is also delaying its release. Federal education officials announced last month that the form would be released by Dec. 31 and remain available through the end of June. For the past several years, students and parents have gotten access to the form in October. Those delays have moved back every other part of the process, as well: The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board shifted the state’s priority deadline for financial aid applications from January to March for the 2024-25 academic year, and colleges and universities are expected to send out award letters later than usual.

The delay will put pressure on high school counselors across the country, who will now need to help a year’s worth of students fill the form out in about three months instead of six. But the challenge is likely to be even greater for counselors in Texas. That’s because during the 2021-22 school year, the state began requiring all graduating seniors to complete either the FAFSA or the Texas Application for State Financial Aid, or TASFA. Since that requirement went into effect, districts across Texas have seen more students filing for financial aid, which means more applications counselors need to manage during this year’s compressed filing window.

FAFSA delay creates headaches for December graduates

Moore said the delayed release of the application has already caused complications for some seniors in the district. One senior was applying to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and got an email from the university saying she needed to have her financial aid application in by early February. The student called her counselor in a panic, saying she didn’t know what to do, since she couldn’t fill the form out before it was released. So the counselor called the university and made sure they understood why the student’s form wouldn’t arrive until later.

The delay makes life even more complicated for students finishing high school in December, Moore said, since they’re required to complete the form as a condition of graduation, but won’t have access to it until about two weeks after they leave school. For those 20 or so students, the district has no option other than having them fill out an opt-out form, he said. Even after they’ve opted out of the state requirement, they can still go back and fill out the form later on, he said, and the district will make sure they can continue to connect with high school counselors if they need help.

Moore said the district’s counselors have been working with families to get them ready to fill out the form when the time comes. But he’s hesitant to encourage them to do so as soon as it opens, he said. Students, teachers and staff in the district don’t return from winter break until Jan. 10. If families try to fill out the form as soon as it opens, there will be no one in the district to help them if they run into problems, he said. So district leaders are encouraging families to wait until kids return to school before starting work on the form, he said.

“Once we get back from break, we’ll just jump in there and start to get through it,” he said

FWISD helps families get a head start on financial aid form

Christina Galanias, director of secondary student engagement for the Fort Worth Independent School District, said counselors and college readiness coaches have been working with families for months to get them ready to fill out the form once it opens, including helping them track down tax documents and set up the federal student aid IDs students need to complete the application. They’ve also been going into classrooms to talk with students about the process for applying for financial aid, she said.

“We do a lot of education on the front end to make sure that they understand what it is and why they need to fill it out,” she said.

For years, counselors in the district have held FAFSA completion nights where they helped students and their parents navigate the form. This year, because of the delays, the district shifted most of those events into the spring, and instead held federal student aid ID nights in the fall as a way of getting families prepared and keeping them engaged. Because the entire process has been shifted back several months, it’s important that families get as much of a head start on the application as they can, said Adagui Aguilera Gomez, a post-secondary success coordinator in the district’s college and career readiness department.

Depending on where the student is applying, that head start could be critical: Although Texas moved its deadline for students to receive priority consideration to the spring, Galanais said not all colleges have done so. So students who are applying to schools that have kept their priority deadlines in January only have a few weeks to apply, she said.

Because colleges will most likely send out financial aid award letters later than usual, counselors are reminding students that it’s important not to make their decisions too quickly, Galanais said. Many of the district’s college-bound seniors are first-generation college students, she said, so they may be likely to want to commit to the first college that sends them an acceptance letter. It’s an impulse Galanais understands — she was the first in her family to go to college, as well, she said. But she tries to remind students that it’s important that they wait until they have every financial aid offer in hand before making a decision, she said.

Uplift counselors work to minimize financial aid surprises

Brittney Cooper, senior director of college and career prep for the charter school network Uplift Education, said most of the network’s seniors complete the FAFSA in the first few weeks after it opens. In a typical year, that means that most students have the application done before they leave for winter break, she said. But because of the delay, the network’s counselors have had to shift their FAFSA completion programming into the spring, she said, with an emphasis on making sure students apply before they leave for spring break.

Although students likely won’t get their financial aid award letters until much later than they would in a typical year, Cooper said the charter network has a few tools to make sure there are no surprises when those offers arrive. Counselors work with students to build lists of colleges that are a good fit for them both academically and financially, she said, and the network’s Road to College and Career team has years of data showing what financial aid packages students received based on their GPA and college readiness level. Counselors can use that data to give students a rough idea of how much financial aid they might expect to receive, she said.

Although the delays are inconvenient this year, Cooper said she’s optimistic about how the changes will affect students. Most of the network’s college-bound students are dependent on financial aid to one degree or another, she said, so simplifying the FAFSA process will reduce headaches for them and their families. She also thinks the expansion of Pell Grant eligibility will open up opportunities that wouldn’t have existed before and show students from low-income families that a college education can be affordable.

FAFSA release delays put pressure on high school counselors

Bill DeBaun, senior director of data and strategic initiatives for the National College Attainment Network, said the delays will put pressure on high school counselors and other professionals who help students prepare their financial aid paperwork. In a typical year, about half of all students who complete the financial aid application nationwide do so between October and the end of the year, he said, with the other half filling the forms out in the spring. This year, those delays push that process into the spring for all graduating seniors, he said, meaning counselors will have to handle that process for every student all at once.

Although the delays will slow the financial aid process for everyone, they will likely have the biggest impact on low-income and first-generation college students, DeBaun said. Those students are more price sensitive than more affluent students, so financial aid packages can be the deciding factor in where they go to college, or even whether they can afford to go at all. The fact that the financial aid application is delayed will mean that colleges and universities won’t be able to send out award letters as early as usual, he said, meaning those families will have to wait to make a decision. It’s hard to predict whether the delays will derail those students’ college plans entirely, or just create headaches along the way, he said.

In some ways, the requirement that all graduating seniors complete the FAFSA might put Texas high schools in a better position to manage those challenges than most, DeBaun said. That requirement forces high schools to build a culture around completing financial aid paperwork, he said, meaning counselors are likely to be more proactive about preparing students and their parents for the process ahead of time and walking them through it when the time comes.

The work counselors do to help students complete the FAFSA isn’t limited to the nuts and bolts of filling the form out, DeBaun said. They also do outreach ahead of time, reminding students about what information they need to have ready before they complete the application, keeping them apprised of deadlines and making sure they understand why it’s important that they do it at all, he said. Counselors can do some of the prep work ahead of time, he said — counselors should already be working to set up the federal student aid IDs students need to complete the application, for example. But in terms of getting students to sit down and fill out the form, DeBaun said there’s only so much counselors can do until the application comes out.

“You can be doing some of the outreach to kind of build momentum for the FAFSA,” DeBaun said. “But if you tell a student in November, ‘Hey, you should, in January, complete the FAFSA,’ that’s a little bit in one ear out the other.”