After Federal Financial Aid Form Fixes, Problems And Worries Remain

The college financial aid process has been delayed many times this year as the federal government has tried to address problems with its revamped form. Colleges have only just started receiving the information they need to give students money.

Are the glitches with the national college federal financial aid form fixed?

“I would say no, because I saw some today,” Allegra Gutierrez said on Thursday. She's a college advisor helping about 100 students in their final year at Centennial High School in Compton.

She said she’s still seeing problems with the signatures required to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). That’s the form millions of college applicants and their families use each year, hoping to tap into need-based money to pay for college.

The form asked for either the student or parent signature, but now, she said, it’s showing an error on applications because there’s a second signature missing.

The solution, she said, is to wait.

“As of now, FAFSA has told us that that would be early to mid-April when corrections would be able to open up,” she said.

Many of the students Gutierrez is helping in Compton will be the first to go to college, but the glitches are also affecting families with college educated parents.

What's at stake?

Some college officials say they’re worried about filling the open seats for fall enrollment because the number of completed FAFSA applications is lower than expected. There’s also concern the FAFSA problems will lead applicants to give up on enrolling for college in the fall.

The Department of Education overhauled the FAFSA form this cycle to make it easier for applicants and their families to fill out. But the new form was about two months late. That and glitches found by applicants have led to a domino effect in the college admissions process that means way less time to decide where to go to college.

That’s raising a big question for applicants: Will I be able to enroll at the college of my choice in the fall?

“What's really at stake for us is our ability to send our daughter to not only a school that she wants to go to, a school that she is planning to play basketball at, and one of the top schools in the nation,” said Nathan Elson, whose daughter attends Portola High School in Irvine. She was offered a scholarship to play basketball at Wellesley College.

There are deadlines coming up to put money down for tuition, housing, and other expenses. He’s hoping financial aid will help cover about $40,000 in yearly expenses.

“The last little bit will affect whether or not we could actually send her there,” he said.

Where can applicants get help?

College admissions officials are very aware of all the FAFSA problems.

“Seventy percent of our students are on some form of financial aid,” said Jessica Wagoner, the head of enrollment management at Cal Poly Pomona.

By this time of the year, she said, her admissions office would normally have twice as many completed financial aid files from students admitted by the university as it has now.

California lawmakers moved the deadline to unlock state financial aid one month, to May 2. The state’s public universities have delayed their decision deadlines by at least two weeks, to May 15, and some to June.

For the coming fall, Cal Poly Pomona is working to fill 4,600 first time freshmen slots and plans to fill 2,744 slots for students transferring in. Wagoner is concerned about how the FAFSA problems will affect her campus’ ability to enroll those students so her offices are holding webinars and office hours to help admitted applicants.

Despite the problems, it’s not doom and gloom among the people helping applicants fill out the FAFSA.

“While [applicants are] confused, they've also expressed a lot of gratitude, including [the] parents,” said advisor Allegra Gutierrez.

Helping overcome the glitches on the way to help students enroll in college, she added, has created a positive bond between advisors, staff, applicants, and their families.