A strong beta season has led to a nearly seamless rollout of this year’s FAFSA application, which opened publicly nearly two weeks earlier than its Dec. 1 schedule. Despite the optimism, higher ed leaders are remaining vigilant.
“So far, knock on wood,” says Michelle Barton, managing director of program operations at Bottom Line, a college advising service for first-generation and low-income students. Barton helped K12 students file for FAFSA during the third round of beta testing. “By the time our students had the opportunity to participate with FAFSA, it was click, click and done.”
The fluidity of this year’s application among first-time filers has translated to a stronger application outlook in higher education. Canisius University has already begun receiving students’ financial data from the Department of Education, says Kevin Smith, assistant vice president for financial services at Canisius. “So far this year, our applications are up, our admits are up and we hope to see our FAFSA filers up as well.”
Last year, on the other hand, colleges and universities were delayed by four to five months in receiving Institutional Student Information Records, commonly known as ISIR.
How to push students to the FAFSA finish line
As well as the FAFSA seems to be running this year, Smith is pushing students to be resilient in case they run into any glitches, setbacks or hiccups. “Regardless of whether students are applying to multiple schools, any of their financial aid offices can help. They’ve got to reach out and talk to a counselor if they’re running into any issues in doing it.”
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Barton believes the most significant way financial aid offices can help prospective and returning students is with painstaking communication and transparency. She has found an error on multiple colleges and universities’ websites that state the FAFSA application opens every year on Oct. 1—without taking exception to this year’s deferred rollout. “Probably 75 to 80% of the schools that we’re looking up, it’s unclear if the deadline is from last year or this year. There’s no year associated with anything.”
Moreover, with the likelihood that the FAFSA application returns to October next year, Barton hopes universities update their communication again. “We’re about to spend the next week picking up the phone and calling these schools that we can’t find their deadlines for.”
