Latest FAFSA Error Affects Aid for 200K, Offers for Everyone Else
"Students and families may have to wait even longer for college financial aid offers this spring. The U.S. Education Department miscalculated financial need in almost 15% of the 1.5 million Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms it processed before March 21," NerdWallet reports.
... "'It certainly is going to impact schools' ability to get out aid packages, both for this student population and probably for others as well,' says Jill Desjean, senior policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. 'It puts schools in a position where now they've got hundreds or hopefully thousands of [processed FAFSAs] on their campus, but now they're going to need to go into their systems and differentiate between those that are accurate and ones that aren't.'"
"The Education Department said a vendor issue was responsible for the incorrect SAI calculations. The department will reprocess the affected FAFSAs and send them back to schools but did not say exactly when it will do so. Desjean expects reprocessing will take a few weeks, at least. As an 'interim fix,' the department said schools can manually recalculate SAIs to develop a 'tentative aid package' for affected students."
"'It would be quite tedious and is a lot to ask of schools at this late date,' Desjean says. 'But if [schools] have to do it, and they're ready to get aid offers out now and that's what's holding them up, I'm sure they will go out and do that.'"
... "'Trust that your financial aid officers are doing everything that they can in light of the challenges they've been presented with,' Desjean says. 'They're still working day and night to get these aid offers out.'"
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Publication Date: 3/26/2024
