Countless prospective college students are eager to commit to colleges, acceptances in hand, but are stuck waiting for one last piece of the puzzle: their college financial aid package. Those offers are coming later than normal this year, due to the troubled launch of the U.S. Education Department’s new federal student aid form, or FAFSA.
Some institutions are doing anything they can to get those offers out as soon as possible – even if it means they aren’t a guarantee. For example, Cal Poly Pomona has decided to send “provisional” aid offers for now, with final offers coming by the time students officially start classes.
“The goal is to have these done, you know, for sure before school starts,” says Jeanette Phillips, head of financial aid there. Phillips says other financial aid administrators in the California State University system, the largest in the country, have decided to do the same thing.
With students and families eagerly awaiting the results of their FAFSA applications, college financial aid offices are in a tough position: They need to send aid offers out as soon as possible to give students time to weigh their options, but they also don’t yet trust the FAFSA data the Education Department is sending them.
That’s because the data has been “riddled with errors or incompletions,” says Justin Draeger, the president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
To navigate this dilemma, Draeger says, “different schools are trying different tactics.”
“Some schools are going to send out provisional or estimated aid offers as soon as they can. Other schools aren’t able to sort through the data. They…
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