As issues with the Department of Education’s rollout of FAFSA are affecting college admissions nationwide, Saint Anselm’s Office of Financial Aid is asking for trust, patience and understanding.

This year, the United States Department of Education launched a revised version of Free Application for Federal and Student Aid, commonly known as FAFSA–signifying the first major changes to the program since its start in 1992. Despite intentions of making FAFSA simpler and easier, colleges across the country are experiencing major delays and calculation errors. 

Elizabeth Keuffel, Assistant Vice President for Enrollment and Director of Financial Aid said that “in her 30 years of working in financial aid, she has never seen anything like this.” 

Federal statute requires FAFSA to be available for families embarking on the college application process by the end of the calendar year, with applications typically rolled out on Oct. 1. The nightmare started this fall, when the applications did not become publicly available until the very last day possible–Dec. 31. This was the first indication that this year’s college admissions process would be a historically drawn-out one. 

To help remedy these initial delays, Vice President of Enrollment Steve Goetsch explained that Saint A’s “offered prospective students the opportunity to submit the CSS Profile starting in November,” allowing the college to offer them an estimated financial aid offer ahead of FAFSA’s postponements. 

As other schools are extending their decision deadlines, Saint Anselm Admissions believes that with this estimated aid feature, most families have sufficient information to make a decision by the typical May 1 deadline.

 However, Keuffel shared that they are handling applications with a “case-by-case basis,” notifying families as they go. Goetsch added that Admissions “will certainly work with any family that makes a direct request to us for an extension.”

The recent FAFSA debacle marks a second major change in college admissions, with the Supreme Court recently striking down on affirmative action. 

When asked how these changes interact with the admissions process at Saint A’s, Goestch responded that “Saint Anselm College has always taken a holistic review of student applications, so the affirmative action decision did not impact the way we recruit students.  I can’t speak to how the FAFSA will or won’t impact us as we are still in the middle of it right now.  Once the full admissions cycle for the class of 2028 is over, we will know more about how it impacted us or not.”

While Goetsch reaffirmed that it is too early to tell how this development impacts college admissions, he does think that “there is a slowdown in students making decisions right now as they wait for financial aid information to be released from all of their colleges and universities. I would say we are ahead of the curve with the release of estimated financial aid offers and finalized offers for those students we have good FAFSA data on.”

Right now, the Saint Anselm Office of Financial Aid’s primary concern is the roughly 50% of incoming students who have had their FAFSA applications selected for reprocessing.

 Elizabeth Kueffel explained that as the Department of Education released their estimated aid offers with college financial aid administrators, it was ultimately up to these college admissions teams to point out the errors. “They tested their data with financial aid administrators, and we found the mistakes.”

She shared that over half of estimated federal aid packages are not right. Students applying to college are getting notifications of these errors, with no way of fixing them.

“You can’t go back to correct mistakes in a radically different process,” Keuffel added.

The Office of Financial Aid is ready to work with these incoming students who are stuck in what Keuffel calls “limbo land.”

“It is hard, but we are doing it,” Kueffel said. Describing the Financial Aid Staff at Saint Anselm as a group of “efficient, caring, thoughtful and smart problem-solvers,” she is not worried about their ability to navigate these issues.

In the meantime, Kueffel is asking current Anselmians to be kind to them as they prioritize  providing accepted students the information they need when facing their decision day of May 1.