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Botched college financial aid form snarls enrollment plans for students

By ANNIE MA,  AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON — After a long summer of technical glitches, most of America’s prospective college students finally applied for federal financial aid — an annual process upended by a redesign-gone-bad.

The number of high school seniors who have completed their Free Application for Federal Student Aid is down 9% compared with this time last year, according to the National College Attainment Network. That number was as high as 40% in the spring, when students usually must submit their forms to give schools enough time to assemble an aid package.

In Alabama, despite frustrations and a chaotic process, 57% of this year’s public high school graduates completed the form, as of this month. That’s up from 48% in late May and only down two percentage points from last year.

Jim Purcell, executive director of the Alabama Commission on Higher Education, attributed the higher-than-national rate to “boots on the ground” efforts over the summer to encourage and assist students.

“I think our interventions made a difference, so the gap wasn’t bigger,” Purcell told Alabama Daily News on Thursday. He credited the commission and colleges, schools and the Birmingham-based nonprofit Alabama Possible for working with students.

How much the FAFSA problems will impact the number of students attending college remains to be seen, counselors and advisers say. But the delays certainly have changed where students enrolled, with many students forced to pick a college with limited information about their financial picture.

“I’m not sure whether (all students) got to go to their No. 1 college,” Purcell said. “If they were all dependent on aid, that part of it was difficult for universities to work through. They were trying to identify students who would commit and perhaps students that were on the cusp or didn’t have their aid packages in would be sort of held to the side as decisions were made.

“I’ll be interested to see if this does impact the retention of students.”

Students already in college were also impacted by the “FAFSA debacle” because they had to renew their applications.

“There are a lot of campus scholarships that are dependent on a completed FAFSA,” he said.

The plunge in FAFSA completion rates nationally was especially sharp for students who already face hurdles to enrolling in postsecondary education, including low-income students and students of color. Advocates worry the delays — on top of a Supreme Court ruling that struck down affirmative action in higher education — will affect where and whether many go to college.

In Alabama, high schools with large minority or low-income populations saw slightly fewer students complete the FAFSA this year, according to national data. Purcell said county-by-county data for public schools show some have significant decreases.

Public high schools’ FAFSA completion rates by county. Source: ACHE

Adjovi Golo, from suburban Chicago, hoped to attend Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta.

The federal financial aid calculators told her she would likely be eligible for $15,000 in loans, grants and work-study, but her FAFSA had not been processed before a May 1 deadline to commit to a college. She called the FAFSA hotline 11 times to resolve a glitch, getting a different suggestion each time.

DePaul University in Chicago, meantime, offered her the most in merit scholarships. Without a complete financial aid package from either school as her FAFSA remained in limbo, she chose to enroll at DePaul, rather than risk taking on more debt.

In August, Golo moved into DePaul’s dorms. She loves her roommate, the campus and her professors.

But she wonders what might have been different.

“I felt like I was just backed into a corner,” she said. “A part of me, like 75% of me, doesn’t regret it. I love it here. But another part of me wishes I waited.”

For students who cannot pay for their entire tuition and fees out of pocket, nearly all forms of financial support — institutional, state and federal, including eligibility for federal loans — require completion of the FAFSA.

A 2020 law directed the Education Department to simplify the FAFSA form, which had been criticized for being tedious and difficult, especially for families without college experience. But the launch of the simplified form in 2023 ran into error upon error — it launched months overdue in December, and students encountered glitches and hours-long waits for helpline assistance.

Emmily Almaraz, a junior at Texas Christian University, said she breezed through the form in under 20 minutes this year. But the students she helped as an intern with a college access organization did not all have the same luck.

Despite spending hours on the phone, one student could not get past the verification process for parents who lack a Social Security number, which is the case for some immigrants. Ultimately, the student decided to delay enrolling until the spring, Almaraz said.

“It’s just really discouraging for certain kids that end up finding out that just because they’re missing one piece of information, it may delay them,” Almaraz said. “It may cause them to pay for an education that they can’t fully pay for.”

Some students admitted to four-year colleges are choosing more affordable two-year colleges closer to home, counselors say. Chandra Scott, executive director of Alabama Possible, said she reached out to the state’s community colleges urging them to prepare for a last-minute influx of students.

“They’re going to hold out as long as they can, because they may really want to go to that four-year institution,” Scott said. “But if they don’t have the financial aid resources that they need to go in a timely manner, they’re going to have to begin to make hard decisions on whether to sit out a year, which we hope they don’t do.”

As for this year’s high school seniors, Purcell said he recommends students don’t wait until the next FAFSA application cycle, likely opening in December, before applying to their priority colleges.

“At a lot of places, the priority for admissions and priority for state grants is as early as Nov. 1,” Purcell said. “I think that these students need to be aware that they may want to go ahead and apply for scholarships at these institutions even before they get a FAFSA.”

Alabama Daily News’ Mary Sell contributed to this report.

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