Applying for college financial aid was never easy. But the botched rollout of the federal financial aid form last year added to the headaches. And now, the Education Department has announced that the form for the 2025-26 school year will be delayed by two months.
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA, is expected to be ready by Dec. 1. The department has said the delay will allow officials to test the latest version of the online form to avoid the myriad problems that plagued the FAFSA for the current academic year.
What can students and their parents do in the meantime? One college aid expert suggested preparing a list of prospective colleges to include on the form and researching scholarships, among other steps. That way, they can be ready when the form is finally available.
The FAFSA is the gateway to federal grants and loans for college, as well as for aid and scholarships from states and individual institutions. Millions of students submit the form annually.
A “simplified” version, which included changes to the underlying financial aid formula, was released almost three months later than usual last year. But the form still suffered repeated glitches, calculation errors and delays, making it difficult both for applicants to submit the form and for colleges to package financial aid offers for students.
The debacle particularly affected students from lower-income households who depend on financial help, including federal grants and loans, to attend college. Even after efforts to fix the problems, the number of high school students in the graduating class of 2024 who completed the form by late August was down about 9 percent from the prior academic year, according to the National College Attainment Network, a nonprofit group that works on behalf of low-income and minority students.
Aiming to avoid a repeat of the bungled rollout, the Education Department said in early August that it would release this year’s form later than the usual Oct. 1 date. Instead, the department is inviting community groups, like nonprofits that help students apply to college, as well as some colleges to participate in a testing period beginning in early October. The testing will involve submitting actual student FAFSAs, starting with a few hundred applicants and a handful of colleges.
Based on feedback from the initial tests, the department said later in August, it will make adjustments, eventually inviting more colleges and “tens of thousands” of applicants to participate.
“The department’s top priority remains ensuring the FAFSA form is stable and delivers a smooth and secure experience for families, schools, states and other partners,” the department said in a statement.
The plan, however, allows just two months to fully vet the form before it goes live. “It’s a tight time frame,” said MorraLee Keller, senior director of strategic programming with the attainment network.
Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said that while “nobody is pleased” with the delay, the plan for “robust and transparent” testing was encouraging.
The association and other groups had pushed for an Oct. 1 release, but told the department in a letter in July that thorough testing and a delay to Dec. 1 was preferable if it resulted in a “reliable, functional” FAFSA.
There are concerns, however. For instance, the department said that even with the form arriving in December, colleges still would not be able to make necessary corrections to submitted FAFSAs in batches, at least not right away. Rather, they must process them individually, a time-consuming process.
“It was disappointing,” Ms. McCarthy said, noting that some colleges must submit thousands of corrections, which might include adding missing signatures, fixing a mis-typed number or updating a family’s income.
Mark Kantrowitz, a financial-aid expert, said he was skeptical that the department could produce a workable test version of the new form by October. In an email, he questioned what he described as an “overly cheerful attitude” on the part of federal student aid officials “even as they rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.”
The department’s plan says the testing will include students from different parts of the country and with varying economic backgrounds. Participating colleges are expected to include public universities, private colleges and community colleges, as well as those mainly serving Black, Hispanic and Native American students.
Ms. Keller said that for the initial tests, the department would probably invite community groups that typically worked with significant numbers of students who applied to the same college so the filing process could more easily be evaluated from the perspective of both the applicants and the colleges.
To be considered for the first round of testing, community groups had to submit an application by Thursday. They should be notified by Monday if they are selected, the department said.
While they await the release of the form for the general public, students and families can complete some tasks now to get a head start, financial aid experts said.
Ms. Keller recommended completing applications and taking college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT, if necessary, before December.
If you haven’t already, she said, create a Federal Student Aid ID on the studentaid.gov site. That’s a username and password combination used to establish an online account and submit the FAFSA. (You’ll need your Social Security number and an email address.)
If you’re financially supported by your parents or a guardian, they’ll also need to submit information for the form, and must establish a separate F.S.A. ID.
Here are some questions and answers about the FAFSA:
What income information will I need to complete the upcoming FAFSA?
The FAFSA for the 2025-26 academic year will request income data for the 2023 tax year.
Will states extend their financial aid deadlines because of the postponed FAFSA?
Last year, in response to the FAFSA problems, many states pushed back their deadlines, to give students more time to submit their forms. It’s possible that could happen again if this year’s rollout doesn’t go smoothly, Ms. McCarthy said, but so far states appear to be waiting to see how the FAFSA testing goes.
Do some states require students to complete the FAFSA to graduate?
At least 11 states, aiming to boost FAFSA completion rates and send more people to college, require high school students to complete the form to get their diploma (although all have an option for students who want to opt out). Officials in Louisiana, the first state to adopt such a policy in 2018, reversed course this year and dropped it, saying it was intrusive.
The post How to Handle the Delay in the Release of the FAFSA Form appeared first on New York Times.
