Students said completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid this year was more burdensome than in previous years, despite federal attempts to simplify the financial aid process.
After Congress passed legislation in 2020 to reduce the number of FAFSA questions from 108 questions to as few as 18 for some applicants, Department of Education officials said the updated form would ease the burden on applicants. Despite the reduction in the number of questions, six students said the application process took longer than in previous years due to intricate questions and processing delays, while a few students said the process felt simplified.
Some colleges in the D.C. region, including the University of Maryland and George Mason University, have extended their enrollment deadline to give prospective students more time to choose a college because of the FAFSA processing delays. GW’s May 1 decision deadline has not changed.
Fatima Vazquez, a graduate student in the Museum Studies program, said her younger siblings in college struggled to complete this year’s FAFSA because the Department of Education didn’t recognize her parents’ Taxpayer Identification Number — an ongoing issue for her despite multiple attempts to contact the Federal Student Aid office.
Vazquez said her parents don’t have Social Security numbers, which hadn’t been an issue until this year. In prior years, Vazquez said her family was able to complete the form and bypass the SSN question by entering in zeroes where the application asked for their Social Security numbers.
“What we’d feel most comfortable with is trying to have a person to speak to because it could end up being that we do the workaround and that it’s still going to be delayed,” she said.
The Department of Education has identified 33 issues from completing this year’s FAFSA, according to an alerts page on their website, including students being unable to proceed past the student identity and information page and parents unable to access the form as a contributor. Of the 33, the department has resolved 17, while 10 of the 16 ongoing issues have a workaround listed.
Federal Student Aid officials scheduled to release the new form in early December last year but waited for the end of the month to implement changes like a Student Aid Index that will indicate financial need.
Sophomore Margaret Light, who studies international affairs, said the new questions were more particular than the old form, causing her application process to take longer to complete because her parents had to ask more questions about her finances to finish the parent section of the form.
“The new questions also were a lot more specific about things that I personally didn’t know, like concerning my parents’ finances, and I felt those were a lot more difficult,” she said.
First-year student Davina Kennedy said she was surprised by the shorter application when she completed her FAFSA because she assumed there would be more questions.
“It was much easier,” she said. “After filling out probably two pages, it was like ‘Oh, you’re done,’ so then I was even checking with my friends like, ‘Did I do it right?’”
Junior Zael Hurtado, who studies international affairs, said he is still filling out his application because he’s waiting for his parents to finish their section of the form. He added that he was told by GW’s financial aid office to wait a “week or two” to fill it out because of unspecified changes made to the whole form in March.
He said GW should do more to inform financial aid applicants on how the processing delays will affect their application.
“Just advertising services more openly, and sending out emails like ‘Don’t forget this is the changes to FAFSA, this is what we’re doing, this is how it’s going to affect our back-end processing system,’” Hurtado said.
Tyler Iglesias contributed reporting.
