KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Organizations and college advisors across the country are urging families to start preparing early ahead of the late rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) this year.
This comes after several issues with glitches and delays during the 2023-2024 school year, and even a recent issue involving corrections.
"The hope is to streamline the form," said Kaitlyn Venta, the director of affordability for the Missouri College and Career Attainment Network. "The previous FAFSA had more than 100 questions, very detailed, required a lot of manual entry. The new form tries to really make things much simpler."
The week of June 7, 2024, students had submitted 9.4% fewer applications compared to the same time last year, according to the Federal Student Aid site.
Venta says the way the form set up this year is very similar to last year’s form to try to address those concerns, like giving students and parents separate logins, eliminating "unnecessary questions."
Like last year, the new form launches in December, which is long after the normal Oct. 1 date. This year, it opens Dec. 1.
"We are hopeful that some of the errors and challenges that students had last year, Federal Student Aid is making final fixes for those," Venta said.
Venta says some of those errors included the amount of time students had to complete the form.
With a form that wasn’t fully functional until January 2024, students had less than a full semester to submit their applications.
The form also required students and parents to be very particular about their Federal Student Aid IDs.
"If you don’t really carefully create your FSA ID, that can create challenges," Venta said. "You type your birthday in wrong, you type your social security number in wrong, then it has a hard time matching your form to your FSA ID. We also saw some challenges with a parent who had an FSA ID from 10 or 15 years ago needing to access that same FSA ID now. Maybe they were in college or had an older student in college, they haven’t accessed it in a while, they weren’t able to log into their FSA ID."
In addition to those challenges, Venta says students with mixed-status families were hit hard last year.
“Federal Student Aid has put a fix in for that, so if you are a student who’s eligible for aid, you’re a U.S. citizen but you have a parent who does not have a social security number, they can now create an FSA ID and log in and complete the form, but that was really challenging last year as well," Venta said.
Dr. Melisa Jimenez knows that firsthand.
As the director of the Family College Prep Program (FCPP) for the Hispanic Development Fund, she says HDF has a vital role in the Kansas City area.
"To address the need of closing that completion gap for Latino/Hispanic students when it came to completing high school, going to college," Jimenez said.
Jimenez said HDF helped submit nearly 500 FAFSA forms during the 2023-2024 school year and even into the summer.
They serve students across nine Kansas City area high schools with the highest Hispanic/Latino populations: J.C. Harmon High School, Wyandotte High School, F. L. Schlagle High School, Sumner Academy of Arts and Science, Bishop Ward, Lincoln College Prep, East High School, Northeast High School and Guadalupe Centers High School.
"Knowing the impact that it had on the Hispanic and Latino populations specifically to our mixed-status students, undocumented families, there were challenges that were unique," Jimenez said. "With the experience of having a really challenging year, we’re using that to better prepare ourselves for maybe some challenges in the road."
While unique to many, some of these challenges were quite familiar to Angela Aguilar Hernandez and her family.
“Especially being a first generation, it was very difficult, and it was something I was always looking forward to going to college,” Aguilar Hernandez.
As a Shawnee Mission West High School senior during the 2023-2024 school year, she recalls struggling for months to complete the online FAFSA form and was ready to complete a paper form just in case, something she decided against after hearing those would be reviewed last.
“It was definitely complicated,” Aguilar Hernandez said. “It did take me four months to finally turn in my FAFSA. I first started my journey the first day it opened. I made my account, and I helped my mom make her account.”
Her mother, Blanca Hernandez Soto, says her goal was always for her children to go to college.
“I’ve always felt really happy, because we didn’t have those opportunities, so we always strived to help them move forward so they could be better than us,” Hernandez Soto said.
But that journey hasn’t always been the easiest, especially when it came to completing the FAFSA.
“At some points, I did feel down,” Aguilar Hernandez said.
As a parent, Hernandez Soto says she was willing to try every avenue to help her daughter.
She said finally, after visiting the Johnson County Library, someone told her about HDF.
“In reality, all this is new for me,” Hernandez Soto said. “Basically, her frustrations were my frustrations because I would watch how she would often times feel desperate and overwhelmed because she wanted to have options for college. So it was difficult, but everything turned out good.”
After submitting her application in April, Aguilar Hernandez finally received her aid.
"Having my mom’s support was very big for me," she said. "It always feels good to know that you have somebody that’s on your side and that’s always there for you, no matter what. The good or the bad."
Now, Aguilar Hernandez is a freshman at Avila University studying nursing.
She says her struggles withe FAFSA have inspired her to pay it forward.
“Being an example has always been very big for me,” Aguilar Hernandez. “I do have a very big family. I have a lot of cousins and my siblings, so they all look to me since I am the oldest out of all of them.”
Her sights are now set on a new goal.
“Trying to help other people around my community because I know it can be very stressful,” Aguilar Hernandez said. “Try to keep a good mentality during this process.”
On HDF’s website, you can find information written in Spanish about everything the organization does, as well as connect with a newly-launched senior community advisor though a form that any family can fill out for FAFSA or general college help.
On MOCAN’s site, families can also find links to resources and get matched to local scholarships and interest-free loan programs after submitting a brief application.
MOCAN is also hosting an in-person workshop for high school counselors, advisors, anyone who is working with students to complete the FAFSA held at UMKC that’s free to attend on October 29.
As for other next steps, HDF and MOCAN say it's never to early to begin preparing.
"What families can do in the fall is create their Federal Student Aid ID, that FSA ID that you use to log in, and then in December, once the form is open, log on and complete as quickly as you can," Venta said. "If you can get your FAFSA done in December or January, you should be good to go, right on track."
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KSHB 41 reporter Rachel Henderson covers neighborhoods in Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties. Share your story idea with Rachel.