FAFSA FAQ

What You Should Be Aware Of: 

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for the 2024-2025 school year is experiencing difficulties that prevent online applications from being submitted. Enacted in 2021 as part of H.R.133, The FAFSA Simplification Act mandates that the U.S. Department of Education (ED) make incremental changes that are intended to make the FAFSA form easier to complete and submit. 

Changes to the FAFSA online submission form were scheduled to debut for the 2024-2025 school year. While the established first day to submit an upcoming FAFSA is on October 1st, it took the Department of Education until December 30th, 2023 to activate the new online application portal. The Department of Education only began sending FAFSA information to colleges on January 30th, 2024. With this delay comes the threat of colleges being unable to award scholarship offers on schedule, which can potentially result in families with college students missing out on financial aid offers.

This "soft launch" of the website's FAFSA application portal has been plagued with issues, and many are reporting an inability to submit their forms. Frequently reported bugs in the online application range from applications not opening, not saving, starting over, failing to submit even after completed, and the website frequently crashing.

The Department of Education is aware of these issues and is periodically shutting the portal down for maintenance. The information that you enter into your application will be saved even if the application is not yet submitted.

What You Should Do:

Do not wait to submit the 2024-2025 FAFSA. Delaying to file may impact your student's eligibility for scholarship awards.

Submitting the 2024-2025 FAFSA online should still be the go-to method as many people have been successful even with the numerous bugs reported by others. If submission issues arise, multiple attempts to redo the application will likely be successful as the ED is actively attempting to improve their website.

Should you continue to have issues applying online, you can submit a hard copy by mail to the Department of Education. PDF versions of the 2024-2025 FAFSA form are available on the Department of Education website. Send via certified mail allows tracking and guarantees that the agency has to sign for it when delivered. The ED states that you will receive an email confirmation and summary of your FAFSA within three to five days.

FAFSA forms have a submission deadline of June 30th, but you may amend a submission before September 30th. Please be aware that colleges often require FAFSA to be completed before the federal deadline.

Federal Student Aid 

Office of Congressman Pete Sessions (TX17)
(202) 225-6105 | (254) 633-4500