As graduation looms, many high school seniors are still waiting for vital financial-aid information that could affect whether they are able to go to college this upcoming fall.
“Normally we would have aid packages out in December,” Mississippi State University Executive Director of Financial Aid Lori Ball told the Mississippi Free Press on April 22. “This is the middle of April, and we still have not awarded our financial aid for the upcoming year. And we have to roll it out very soon.”
On March 22, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it had discovered an error in calculating the Free Application for Federal Student Aid formula. The miscalculation caused colleges and universities to receive incorrect information for applicants who completed their application before March 21. Those applications had to be reprocessed, causing delays in notifying students about the amount of aid they were eligible to receive.
“What they told us was that we have affected files in unaffected files,” Ball said. “I believe (the date) was March 21. There were a lot of applications that were sent out prior to that where federal tax information was being reported incorrectly. So what we have termed is those files were affected. For those that are unaffected, we were able to move forward with those applications. Those that are affected are being reprocessed by the Department of Education.”
The FAFSA helps colleges and universities determine eligibility for various forms of financial aid, including scholarships, work-study programs and grants. The Pell Grant, the largest source of federal aid for many students from low- and moderate-income backgrounds, is dependent on FAFSA information. Each year, nearly 7 million undergraduate students benefit from Pell grants.
Mississippi Submissions Down 37% Since 2023
The announcement of another setback frustrated financial aid officials nationwide who had already been dealing with delays. The U.S. Department of Education overhauled the application in accordance with the FAFSA Simplification Act, which Congress passed in 2020. However, the launch of the new form delayed its availability by three months. Once available, applicants experienced system crashes, long wait times and systemwide glitches.
“What we found was a lot of students were held in waiting so it took a while to get in,” Ball said. “And then once they got again, there could have occurred other problems. (Students being able to complete the electronic) signature portion of the form and just having the federal tax information coming over correctly has been another issue that we have seen.”
Ball said she has heard from many parents and students that the issues caused them to wait before completing the application.
“Now that we have actually started receiving applications in our office, we’re just now really starting to look at that data and to see what those look like,” Ball said.
The National College Attainment Network reported that as of April 19, only 31.9% of Mississippi high-school seniors had submitted their Federal Application for Student Aid, down nearly 37% from last year. Submissions are down 29% nationally. Failure to complete the application means that students may not receive financial assistance for which they are eligible. A report released by NCAN on Jan. 11 found that, nationally, the high school class of 2023 left more than $4 billion in Pell Grant funds on the table by not completing the FAFSA.
Mississippi ranked third nationally last year with 70% of its 2023 graduating seniors having completed their 2023-24 application.
“This ranking continues to validate the work that many educators, teachers, counselors, advisors, career coaches and mentors are doing to support Mississippi’s high school graduates’ next-step plans after high school graduation,” Woodward Hines Education Foundation President and CEO Jim McHale said in a Dec. 6 press release.
On Jan. 23, the Mississippi Post-Secondary Education and Financial Assistance Board voted to extend the deadline for submission of the 2024-2025 FAFSA form from April 30 to June 30 due to the late release. The state administers several state financial-aid grants like the Mississippi Tuition Assistance Grant (MTAG), the Mississippi Eminent Scholars Grant (MESG) and Higher Education Legislative Plan (HELP). Those awards require students to complete the Mississippi Aid Application (MAAPP).
“The FAFSA is required for the HELP grant and the post-secondary board voted to push that deadline back to June 30 this year to give students additional time to submit it for HELP grant eligibility,” Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Director Jennifer Rogers told the Mississippi Free Press on April 29. “For MTAG and MESG, the FAFSA is not required. There’s a separate application for all of the state aid programs so we don’t rely on the FAFSA exclusively.”
A message on the Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid’s webpage says SFA is receiving and processing FAFSAs. “Once your FAFSA has been received and processed, it will be marked as “received” in MAAPP. Please do not contact the office about FAFSAs, as we cannot provide more information at this time,” it adds.
“Also, do NOT send or upload FAFSA Submission Summaries, since only files received from FSA can be accepted. Remember that all 24-25 FAFSAs completed by June 30 will be accepted for HELP,” the message continues.
‘All Schools Are in the Same Boat’
As one of the poorest states in the nation, Mississippi students rely heavily on aid for postsecondary education. Data the Education Data Initiative reported found that 75,904 Missisippians were awarded Pell Grants based on their Expected Family Contribution.
Ball said that Mississippi State has worked to communicate with students through the delays and provide the information that they do have available. For instance, all first-time freshmen are eligible for $5,500 in student loans. However, they are still not able to give a full financial aid award.
“The thing that we don’t know is what (their) Pell Grant or other need-based aid looks like,” Ball said. “Now, we can see their SAI, which is the indicator we use for PELL eligibility and to determine their need (for) eligibility. So now we can actually view that information in our system and have a good conversation with the students to let them know where they stand. But it’s much later in the year than where we have been in previous years.”
On March 28, the Woodward Hines Education Foundation sent a letter to the state’s colleges and universities requesting that they extend their application deadlines due to the delays. Ball said it’s important for students and parents to know that all colleges and universities are facing the same issues.
“All schools are in the same boat, unfortunately,” she said. “It’s not like one school is able to do more than the other right now. A lot of it is waiting on the reprocessed financial aid applications to get back into our offices that the Department of Education said had to be reprocessed. We’re just moving forward with those that we know are not affected so that we can at least get some type of reports out there for our students.”
