New FAFSA application affects Texas students and staff

Certified personal finance counselors at Texas Financial Wellness Nayla Borrell, from left, Nilda Mason, Gilberto Rios and Eric Flynn table and hand out pamphlets on West Campus’ Speedway on Feb. 14, 2024. Texas Financial Wellness offers FAFSA workshops for current students twice a week both in person and online to assist them in navigating the new online application. (Photo credit: Sonali Menon)

Students lounge at the lawn by UT’s Tower on Feb. 26, 2024, in Austin, Texas. 56 percent of all Longhorns receive some form of financial aid, and families with adjusted gross incomes of up to $125,000 are guaranteed need-based assistance through the Texas Advance Commitment, which works in accordance with the credit union, according to UT’s Office of Admissions. (Photo credit: Sonali Menon)

This is a photo illustration of Mahek Rawat, biochemistry and premed senior at Texas A&M, creating a new FAFSA account and form submission on Feb. 24, 2024, in College Station, Texas. Rawat said she did not receive a substantial financial aid package for the 2023-2024 school year and fears that since her younger sister, a current junior in high school, will be entering college soon, she will receive even less money than in previous years because the new financial aid formula could potentially lead to less money given to students who are siblings, according to a Feb. 3, 2024 report by the New York Times. (Photo credit: Sonali Menon)

Rawat shows an email she received in Nov. 2022 from the Department of Education verifying they received her previous FAFSA application. Rawat is currently applying for medical school but is not planning on filing for federal financial aid. She believes she will receive less money than in previous years due to the new financial aid formula. (Photo credit: Sonali Menon)

Nicky Alexander, nursing junior and student associate at UT’s Texas One Stop, assists a student at the Texas One Stop office on Feb. 15, 2024, in Austin, Texas. The Texas One Stop office opened on June 14, 2022, and offers students a space to take care of several vital needs, including financial aid and FAFSA counseling, tuition payments, and more. (Photo credit: Sonali Menon)

Brandie Cleaver, college and career counselor at Austin High School, serves around 50 seniors daily, discussing their futures and aiding them with their college applications. Cleaver’s usually optimistic disposition was replaced by full-blown panic after reading a headline about FAFSA in January. She excused herself from her office and went to the bathroom, where she broke down in tears.

“At school, we joke, ‘Don’t do that! You might give Ms. Cleaver a heart attack. Don’t be the student in your class that gives her a stroke,’” Cleaver said. “I am certain that the federal government is trying to give me a stroke.”

The news that devastated the woman who students and staff lovingly nicknamed “mama bear”: a new, shorter version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form launched on Dec. 31, 2023, with a myriad of issues, causing a pushback in the application timeline. 

On Dec. 21, 2021, the Department of Education passed the FAFSA Simplification Act, which amended several parts of the 2024-2025 FAFSA. Students can usually access the form every year on Oct. 1, but the new version didn’t get “soft launched” until Dec. 30, 2023, because the Department of Education needed more time to revamp it. Within the first month of its release, the new application was mired with issues as applicants could only access it intermittently throughout the week. Students were placed into virtual waiting rooms to manage capacity. The form only became available 24 hours a day on Jan. 8, according to a press release by the Department of Education.  

According to Tracie Armes, the deputy director of the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid at the University of Texas at Austin, the number of questions on the previous FAFSA was the greatest obstacle for participants. The new form reduces the number of questions from 108 to 46 and removes questions regarding selective service registration and drug convictions. Additionally, it now links directly to the IRS to obtain information about family income, which determines a student’s eligibility for federal financial aid. 

“It may be shorter, but it doesn’t feel easier,” Sanya Surani, accounting senior at the University of Texas at Dallas, said.

Students with family estrangement situations or those with immigrant parents face greater challenges in completing the form. The new FAFSA eliminates the need to input tax information by hand. Instead, parents must create a separate account that links directly to their IRS account. However, this also prevents parents without Social Security numbers from submitting their forms online. 

Surani was accepted into UTD’s fast-track program in 2022, which allows her to pursue an accelerated master’s degree after graduation. Every year, she applies for federal financial aid by herself as she does not receive financial assistance from her estranged parents and could input their tax information by typing it out. This year, she must consult a lawyer to draft a letter explaining her situation to the Department of Education as she cannot directly link her parents’ IRS account herself. 

“I’m banking on this, and not just the aid itself but also the refunds because that’s what funds my textbooks,” Surani said. “I work more than 40 hours a week in an internship, so I have a bit of income, but I’m on my own here and feel a bit lost.”

​​Most colleges set May 1 as the deadline for accepted students to commit. In previous years, schools received financial aid data in mid-January, and students received their financial aid packages by mid-March. However, institutions like UT will only receive financial aid data from the Department of Education in mid-March, delaying planning decisions determined by estimated class size and tuition revenue compared to previous years, Armes said. 

The new FAFSA utilizes a new formula known as the Student Aid Index, which considers family size, poverty level and income to determine a student’s eligibility for federal aid and Pell Grants. 

“(The new formula) differentiates between the neediest students to an even needier student,” Armes said.

577,542 Texas students were eligible for the Pell Grant in 2023. Now, an additional 51,000 new students from Texas will qualify for the Pell Grant due to the new formula, and about 133,000 Pell recipients will receive the maximum amount of $7,395 per year under the grant, according to the U.S. Education Department. 

However, the amount of money students could receive is complicated by a mistake made by the Department of Education. When the department created the new formula, they did not adjust it for rising inflation. This mistake could cost the projected 17 million students expected to fill out the FAFSA this year $1.8 billion in aid, according to a Jan. 9 report by NPR. 

“There’s no fast pass, so you certainly don’t want to be at the end of a bad line,” Cleaver said. “The revisions were necessary, but (the Department of Education) definitely could have done a better job with implementation.”

This story was originally submitted as an assignment for journalism portfolio taught by Nuri vallbona at the university of texas at austin