Brislyn Harrelson didn't plan on spending six months studying for college.
The high school senior from New Smyrna Beach, Florida, has submitted seven applications since last September and expected to know where she would attend by this fall. Instead, in the past two months she has filed a slew of six new applications, all of them to state universities with lower tuition fees.
Harrelson, 18, is one of millions of current and prospective college students whose application process was derailed by this year's botched review of the free application for federal student aid. A series of glitches and formula errors between the December announcement and just a week ago turned what was supposed to be a more streamlined process into a bureaucratic purgatory for applicants and admissions officers alike.
“I feel sorry for the children,” Briselin's mother, Kelly Harrelson, said. She has heard back from all but two of the six schools her daughter has recently attended, but one of the hurdles on the ongoing FAFSA is preventing offers of potential need-based aid. He said it was on hold. “They started their high school years during the pandemic, and now they are about to start their college careers during this disruption.”
The FAFSA has become a gateway to other forms of aid. Without knowing how much a student will receive from the federal government, many schools and scholarship programs cannot put together their own offers. Federal officials say they will take a key step to move the process forward in mid-April.
While many students, like Harrelson, are still in the pattern, others are already having to make difficult decisions they didn't expect.
transfer money to pay tuition fees
After seeing the FAFSA mess, Kelly Gainer decided to cut her 401(k) contributions by almost half this year to save on tuition.
Although her daughter Kennedy is still waiting on federal aid information, she has already enrolled at her dream school, James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and secured on-campus housing. We are working. Without the FAFSA, potentially meritorious scholarships are left in limbo, leaving households unsure of how much loan they will need to take out.
“This stress level is a whole new level for me,” said Gaynor, who works as a contract manager for a health insurance company in Albany, New York.
She and her husband have a $25,000 college fund for their only child, Kennedy. But they're worried it won't do as well as they hoped, and are starting to shift some of their investments to more aggressive options. I also shelved my plans to buy a new car this year.
“It feels very difficult to be put in a situation where you potentially owe $100,000 worth of debt and you don't even know exactly what you're getting yourself into,” Gaynor said.
The Ministry of Education has been clearing the backlog since mid-March. Although it had processed 4.3 million of the more than 6 million FAFSA applications filed this year through March 25, the agency has since reported additional errors that required some applications to be reprocessed. .
It feels like agreeing to buy a car or a house without knowing how much it will cost.
The ministry continues to keep people informed with regular updates and webinars, but did not respond to requests for comment on what choices some households are making in the meantime.
In a recent American Council on Education survey, two out of three university officials said they doubted their ability to process student financial information from the FAFSA “within a few weeks.” In consideration of the delays, many universities have postponed the deadline for determining successful candidates from around May 1st to May 15th to June 15th.
Rather than waiting for aid information, some families of college athletes are starting to plan for the financial impact.
“It feels like you're agreeing to buy a car or a house without knowing the price,” Natalie Alvarado said. His son, Roman, decided in March to attend MidAmerica Nazarene University in his family's home state of Kansas. his position on the soccer team;
The family doesn't know how much money they will raise beyond the athletic scholarships the university is offering to cover half of Roman's tuition.
“We have debt, and we know what it looks like,” Alvarado said. I know his dream of playing soccer and I hope he can make that dream come true. ”
Establishment at safety school
Olivia Maynard Payne, an Advanced Placement student from Latz, Florida, wanted to study biology and went to her final choice, the University of South Florida, because it was the safest choice financially. I decided to do it.
Her mother, Ann Maynard Payne, is a single parent who relies on permanent disability benefits to support Olivia and her grandchildren. Olivia works part-time jobs up to 30 hours a week while attending high school to save up for college. But while this household relied on the FAFSA to cover her college costs, one of the widespread application issues prevented her from signing the online form.
“This new algorithm has caused great confusion and great anxiety for me, especially Olivia,” Maynard Payne said. “She's not happy. This isn't her school.” But with housing on campus filling up, continuing to seek assistance information wasn't an option for her, she said.
Olivia attended Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. She attended the University of Rochester in New York. and Wellesley College in Massachusetts each offered her merit scholarships ranging from $9,000 a year to her $29,000. But all three are still underfunded, and until her FAFSA applications are processed, she can't tell whether those schools or the government will provide additional support based on her needs.
So after Olivia qualified for Florida's Bright Futures program and was able to attend USF for free, she decided not to change her choice even if more money came in. I didn't think about it.
“That would just stress me out even more,” she said. “If I was expecting it and they didn't give me nearly enough in the end, it would just be more of a disappointment.”
Sherry Shenzieros, a mother from a blended family in Blaine, Minn., has four of her six children currently attending or applying to college.
It's like sending information into a black hole.
Her oldest son, Jonah, 21, is a sophomore at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, and her stepson, Avery, 20, has one more summer semester left at Hennepin Technical College outside Minneapolis. Her younger biological son, Blake, 18, and her step-son, Sam, 17, are high school seniors and are both applying to college this fall.
Shenzieros, her husband Eric, and his ex-wife each filled out FAFSA forms for their four children, all of which are listed as processed. But they have yet to receive a single financial aid package.
“It's like sending information into a black hole,” Shenzieros said. “At this point, we don’t even know if we’re going to hear anything.”
Blake has already committed to play Division III football at Bethel University in St. Paul. However, due to financial concerns, Sam chose to study at a local community college rather than attend his brother's Bethel University.
“He's still choosing to go to school, but it's not necessarily his choice,” Shendosieros said.
She is a high school vice principal and her husband works in the IT industry. Together, they earn about $200,000 a year, and the family has a fifth child, now 10, who relies on her student loans and grants to help her household finance higher education. That's what he said.
“I just hope something works out,” Shenzieros said. “I feel like I failed by not being able to resolve this.”
