By Aren Framil, Co-Editor-in-Chief
On Nov. 21, the U.S. Department of Education released the 2025-26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) nearly two months later than the historical release date of Oct. 1 and 10 days earlier than its predicted 2024 rollout date of Dec. 1. Last year, major changes to the FAFSA’s formatting and financial aid formula resulted in an approximately three-month delay and widespread glitches. This year, the department beta-tested the form from October to November to prevent issues, slowly allowing select students to fill out the application before making it fully available on Nov. 18 and officially releasing it on Nov. 21.
Guidance counselor Rachel Reavy helped students who experienced glitches with the 2024-25 FAFSA and said that this year, the department prepared in advance to manage any potential issues.
“We’ve met as a department. Several of us have gone to different trainings to hear about the rollout and hear what’s new. We’re just really hoping that things are going to be as (the Department of Education) claim this year,” Reavy said. “We will be here to support everybody and help make phone calls and get in touch with colleges if we need to. It’s not ideal — because it’s your financial business, not ours, we can’t really ask a lot of questions. But we’re here to help support your family through the process.”
Last admission cycle, some schools pushed back their decision days — the deadline by which students have to commit to a school — to accommodate the delays with financial packages caused by the late FAFSA release. Reavy hopes that this year’s delay will not cause similar issues.
“The delay in (the 2024-25 FAFSA) rolling out, and then the glitches that it had, meant that people didn’t get their financial packages from schools in a timely manner, which then pushed back when people were making decisions,” Reavy said. “That became really stressful for a lot of families.”
Senior Shruti Satheesh, who applied early decision before the Nov. 21 rollout, said that the form releasing on Oct. 1 would have helped her make a more informed financial decision.
“I feel like it’s just a disappointment,” Satheesh said. “I feel like it’ll (have) given me a closer direction, a clear direction of where I might be able to go based off tuition.”
Senior Amber Bowden experienced some issues with information being updated across parent and student Federal Student Aid accounts but was able to successfully fill out the 2025-26 FAFSA form in early December.
“Whenever my parents would file something, it would say that it wasn’t filed correctly, and they had to redo it to match mine. But sometimes it wouldn’t match, and it’ll be like, ‘Oh, it’s not matching, so you have to redo it.’ So we had to redo it a couple of times,” Bowden said. “It was very hard, very frustrating, because it was very long on the parents’ part.”
This year, Reavy said she is not aware of any students having glitches with the FAFSA so far, though it may be too early to tell.
“There haven’t been any issues that I have been made aware of yet. I feel like FAFSA rolled out earlier than they were estimating, which people were pleasantly surprised with, and I haven’t had anybody coming to me with glitches yet. That either means people haven’t submitted their FAFSA yet, or the glitches haven’t come to light yet,” Reavy said. “Hopefully the delay this year is to prevent that from happening. I’m hopeful that they’re accurate in that. I’m going to stay optimistic.”
Aren Framil can be reached at [email protected].
