How’s The FAFSA Going?
This year, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form used to establish college students’ eligibility for federal financial aid has undergone significant updates, leading to more processing delays compared to the schedules of previous years. As of March 25, the Department of Education announced that it has processed more than 4 million FAFSA applications, but according to a report by U.S. News, the department was planning to have the first batch of applications processed by January, putting them 2 months behind schedule. Fortunately, according to Reed Director of Financial Aid Sandy Sundstrom, current students shouldn’t notice any changes to Reed’s usual processing time. “Aid offers will be sent in batches to students starting in early June, which is the typical timeframe,” Sundstrom said in conversation with the Quest.
The FAFSA was altered with the goal of making the notoriously difficult form easier to navigate, and increasing the amount of Federal aid most students will be eligible to receive. About the changes, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said, “The delays are challenging, but colleges will be much better off, too.”
“Reed uses the CSS Profile to determine eligibility for Reed grants, so the way in which Reed grants are calculated will not change… [but] studies have indicated that more low-income students will qualify for Pell grant funding under the new [FAFSA] calculation,” said Sundstrom, with the caveat that there’s no way to know for sure what patterns will emerge in the new aid amounts until they are released. The CSS Profile is a standard form used by members of the College Board to determine a student’s eligibility for internal institutional grants — in our case, the form, which is due April 15, determines how much money someone receives directly from Reed College.
Changes to the FAFSA were greenlit in 2020 with bipartisan support in Congress. Since then, the other major college tuition issue has been loan forgiveness. The Biden Administration has continued to pursue some student loan forgiveness, but those measures have been successfully overturned by the conservative-majority Supreme Court, and most recently by a coalition of 11 Republican-led states, so for now, the future of changes in loan forgiveness is up in the air.