By Arpan Josan

For many college students, the steps for completing the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form can be challenging to navigate. The process involves gathering detailed financial information from your family, including tax returns, which can be rather complicated. This academic year, the FAFSA experience became even more precarious due to students being unable to access the application as it went online. There were service outages, system crashes, login problems and signature issues. This comes as the U.S. Department of Education sought to overhaul the FAFSA application process in hopes of making it easier to navigate, with the goal of improving the user experiences with fewer questions and expanding eligibility for federal student aid.  

Typically, students can access the form in October in order to submit everything before the next academic year. However, the new FAFSA form was released in January 2024, three months later than in past years. The result is that Adelphi University received students' financial information later than usual. With students not being able to access the form right away, this made submitting it an even longer process. 

University Response 

Since the One-Stop Student Services Center handles financial aid packages to students, Teresa Weston, the student experience manager, gave a better insight into how Adelphi has managed these delays and glitches. She said that this year, Adelphi didn’t begin receiving student financial records until April 3, seven months later than the prior year. Since then she said the office has been generating College Financing Plans (CFPs) daily.

“As of Aug. 5, 86% of all our new and returning students’ CFPs have been generated and shared with them and their families,” she said. “Any students not yet completed may be missing information or need corrections to their FAFSA, a common occurrence every year.” As of press time, that number had jumped to 90%.  

Weston also discussed how One-Stop has worked closely with Adelphi’s Admissions Department as well as the Information Technology Department to create these financial packages for both returning and new students. This was to make sure everything was in place for the first billing cycle in July 2024.   

“The FAFSA glitches caused bills to be generated without financial aid for some of our students,” Weston said. “For them, we extended the payment date by a week to July 28 and deferred late fees until Aug. 24. We continue working with them and delivering their CFPs.”

Student Responses  

Polls were conducted on The Delphian's Instagram story to better understand the problems that were occurring. The first poll was conducted to see if students were spending more time on the new FAFSA. At the end of the poll, 80% of students voted “yes” to spending more time on the FAFSA than in past years while 20% voted “no.”   

Students who had submitted the FAFSA but realized they had made a mistake usually had to wait four to seven days until they could make the necessary changes. As for if they were able to access the application as soon as it went online, 100% of students said “no.” 

Some students have spoken about their experiences with the new FAFSA. Aani Metha, a junior psychology major, said, “It went super quick and smoothly for me because I waited until all the bugs were gone. But it made my financial aid come in super late and tuition was due before the financial aid at first, so I felt rushed to pay without knowing the help I'd receive. So it caused a ripple effect of things getting delayed while other things got overly rushed.”

Cassidy Bedell, a sophomore English major, said, “For some reason, the FAFSA kept saying that my parents' info was incorrect when it wasn’t so that really pushed back the time that I was able to submit.”

“The whole FAFSA process for this year was very time-consuming as it wouldn’t let me access it right away which made it very frustrating,” said sophomore marketing major Nicole Alvarado. “The application also failed a couple of times and once I got back on, none of my past information was saved so I had to repeat everything.” 

These FAFSA complications have also shown a decrease in completion. The U.S. News reported a decline in FAFSA forms in the high school Class of 2024 compared to the Class of 2023. 

Outcomes 

On June 17, 2024, Shawana Singletary, assistant vice president and chief enrollment officer at Adelphi, had the opportunity to sit down with WCBS Newsradio 880 “Drive Time” in an episode titled “Drive Time: NYS FAFSA Delays Cause College-bound Students Aid.” The episode discussed the FAFSA delays and the decline in applications. In the episode, her response to the question of why the FAFSA was a mess this year, she replied: “... the government was mandated to make changes to the FAFSA, make it more simple for students and families to understand and be able to complete.

“Unfortunately, they didn't do what they needed to do on the processing end so even once they made the changes, they weren’t able to launch the actual application, and then when they did launch the application there were a lot of errors on the backend so people couldn’t make any changes, couldn’t make any updates and that's just something that's really important to do with the FAFSA,” Singletary said in the episode.

In response to this issue, the One-Stop Department has received an influx of calls and messages from students regarding their financial packages. Weston said despite this, they’re committed to giving the best services to every student and their families.       

“This year we were able to provide students with a new and improved College Financing Plan, approved by the National Colleges Transparency Initiative. We also improved our billing and communications efforts and created several online video tutorials.”

The videos titled “One-Stop Student Services Center_ College Financing Plan Tutorial” and “Understanding Your Adelphi Tuition Bill” can be found on Adelphi University's website as well as the Adelphi, One-Stop Student Services Center YouTube channel. 

Adelphi also issued a statement concerning the Fall 2024 tuition bill deadline. Originally, students received an email saying that their tuition bills were due July 21, 2024. However, due to the FAFSA delays, One-Stop extended its deadline by one week, making the billing due July 28, 2024.