This year’s FAFSA is open, and early reviews are positive

Delays and errors in the federal financial aid process created anxiety and headaches last year for high school seniors, their parents and colleges.

But experts say this year’s rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, has improved in several ways. 

The U.S. Department of Education released the official application on Nov. 21, after seven weeks of beta testing.

FAFSA expert Jack Wallace said as of last week, more than 1 million people had filled out the new FAFSA form. He said colleges and universities are reporting few problems getting records. 

Wallace, the director of Yrefy, a company that refinances private student loans, said the only concern is the number of people filling out FAFSA forms was down last year and may continue to decline.

The national average of students filling out the FAFSA form in the class of 2024 was about 54 percent. Wisconsin ranked 38th in the nation, with about 47 percent of graduating seniors filling out a form, Wallace said. 

That was about 8.5 percent lower than the number of Wisconsin seniors who applied in 2023, Wallace said. 

“If they’re going to be graduating in 2025, they should fill out that form,” Wallace said, adding that about 85 percent of people who apply for FAFSA receive money.

“The important thing to remember is financial aid is first come, first serve,” Wallace said. “It’s not an empty pot that has a ton of money that never goes away. Once the money is gone, you have to wait for the next academic year.”

This year’s FAFSA form looks the same but is easier to fill out, has 50 questions instead of 100 and links directly to IRS data, Wallace said. 

These form also allows students to chose up to 20 colleges instead of the previous 10. 

Last year, FAFSA had a congressionally-mandated overhaul that was intended to simplify the form. Instead, it caused significant delays. Students had to wait months longer than usual to find out how much aid they would receive and how much they would need to pay to attend college. 

“Last year was probably the biggest debacle of my 20 years in higher education,” said Ashley Hanson, Carthage College’s vice president of enrollment. 

Carthage, a private liberal arts college in Kenosha County, charges about $31,000 a year. 

Hanson said 100 percent of Carthage students receive some form of financial aid. The school also has a promise program giving families that make less than $65,000 a year free tuition. 

She said last year, about 30 percent of the FAFSA data Carthage received was incorrect, causing further delays. Surprisingly, the FAFSA delays did not hurt enrollment at Carthage this year. The school has its largest enrollment in history with nearly 2,800 students. 

Hanson she feels “cautiously optimistic” about this year’s FAFSA process. 

“We started receiving data last week from the government,” Hanson said. “As families have been able to file, and we have started to receive that information back, we are actually going to be on track to get financial aid packages out to students between mid to late January, which is actually really good timing.”