According to the United States Department of Education, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) was updated for the 2024-2025 academic year to improve the application process and reduce frustration for future college students. For some, the new application has proven to be the opposite.
The updated application was initially slated to be released to students on October 1, 2023, but it was delayed multiple times due to glitches and maintenance periods. The site wasn’t officially opened to students until the early weeks of January.
However, the new application led to a variety of issues for its student applicants. Specifically, a new change in the FAFSA application requires parents to create their own accounts and provide a valid social security number alongside it, which disproportionately impacts first-generation college students.
“[The new changes] basically stopped me from being able to actually submit my FAFSA for basically three months ever since January,” said Erik, a sophomore majoring in the business of cinematic arts whose last name has been withheld by Annenberg Media for protective reasons.
As a first-generation college student, Erik said the biggest obstacle in completing the FAFSA was the valid social security number requirement.
“I had to submit the paper incorrectly at first because of the social security issues. And even when the corrections were up, I still had to wait an extra week to even get in my corrections. So it’s been a lot of waiting.”
David, whose last name has also been withheld for protective reasons, is another first-generation college student and a sophomore majoring in real estate. He also said that the social security portion of the application made the process more complicated.
“It was definitely very stressful, not just for me but also for my parents…it’s a very stressful thing to have to worry about your kid if they’re going to be able to come back [to school] the next year,” David said.
David and Erik searched online to see whether anyone else was experiencing similar issues and to determine what else could be done. Both concluded that there were no workarounds, with David saying that “everyone was in the same spot.”
Daniel Coleman, a worker for USC’s Financial Aid’s Student Services Contact Center, said that students with concerns over the new FAFSA application have had questions all year.
“They’ve been only ramping up in intensity, kind of following our deadlines,” he said.
“In the lobby, I’ve had about six to eight students who’ve asked about the FAFSA,” said Coleman. “Over the phone, it’s been easily over a dozen today.”
Coleman also noted that the most prominent issue has been with “parent verification and social security number verification for students whose parents don’t have a social [security number]”
According to Coleman, USC has been doing its best with the issues the new FAFSA application has raised, but emphasized that the delay is “on a systemic level that we haven’t really seen before.”
Coleman clarified that his opinions are his own and do not represent his department.