New FAFSA application causing problems for Iowa students

DES MOINES, Iowa — While Federal Student Aid is calling this year’s FAFSA application, “a better 2024-25 FAFSA form,” students and counselors in Des Moines have other adjectives in mind.

Following the passage of the FAFSA Simplification Act, the Department of Education introduced changes to the application process in phases. The final phase was implemented in the 2024-2025 application. The changes were meant to make the application process faster and easier, however, it seems to have the opposite effect.

“While the form is actually simpler, the process is much more complicated, and so it’s actually been more challenging getting FAFSAs completed this year,” said Julia Minnehan, a post-secondary counselor at Lincoln High School.

Minnehan worked at Lincoln High School for nine years and she said the FAFSA application used to take her around 20 minutes to complete with students. Now, she said this new application takes around an hour to complete, but there’s also a lengthy process before students can fill it out.

“[Under] the old process, parents would just provide their information and then students would come in and we’d create all the IDs and get the FAFSA done in one swoop. Now, both parents have to make an ID and students have to make an ID. There’s a wait time. We still don’t even know what it is. They said three days, but [for] some students it hasn’t been ready,” said Minnehan.

On top of the changes to the actual application process and the form, there have also been many glitches since the application first came out in late December.

One glitch is an issue with the Student Aid Index (SAI), formerly the Expected Family Contribution (EFC). The SAI is meant to calculate an estimated amount of aid that a student will receive. This year, there’s a problem with the calculation and students aren’t given an estimate.

According to Minnehan, another problem is that students with undocumented parents are having issues applying. To be eligible to fill out the FAFSA, students have to be a citizen or an eligible non-citizen and have legal status here, but there are no requirements for parents.

“We actually have a lot of students who are eligible to fill out the FAFSA, but we can’t get it done because their parents are not legal citizens here and the glitch is not fixed yet,” said Minnehan.

Minnehan said that Lincoln High School students are particularly at a disadvantage from the new application since most of their students are first-generation and low-income students, meaning that finances play a huge role in their college decisions.

“Part of my job is to make sure that those barriers can get removed, and the biggest thing I’ve said is get your FAFSA filled out so we can kind of see what we have to work with. And so now we’re not getting the answers to those questions,” she said.

And Minnehan said the big problem that students face is that while the FAFSA application is undergoing problems, the college process continues. Many colleges haven’t lifted their financial aid deadlines and some scholarships have FAFSA requirements, making this a huge barrier for students right now.