FAFSA delays costing my daughter scholarships - need urgent help!

omg same boat!! my son has til April 30 for his engineering scholarship and still waiting on 3 schools financial aid. this fafsa rollout is a MESS this year

I work in a college financial aid office. Here's what you should do: 1. Contact EACH scholarship organization immediately and explain the situation. Most will grant a short extension if you document the FAFSA delay issues. Get this in writing. 2. Call the financial aid offices at both schools. Ask if they can provide a preliminary estimate based on your SAI, even if they don't have the complete federal data yet. Many schools can give you an unofficial estimate. 3. If the schools already have your SAI, they should be able to tell you approximately what grants/scholarships you qualify for - the federal data they're waiting on is more for verification purposes. 4. As a last resort, you can provisionally accept at the school you're leaning toward and direct the scholarships there. If the final aid package makes another school significantly more affordable, you can still switch before the May 1 decision deadline (though you might lose a deposit).

Have you tried reaching out to your daughters high school counselor? Ours was able to send somethign official to the scholarship people saying the FAFSA was delayed nation-wide. Got us a 2 week extension on everything!

I'm having the same issue with my twins. What I did was call each scholarship org and explain the nationwide FAFSA delays. 2 out of 3 gave us extensions until May 15. The third one was a jerk about it but eventually agreed to hold the funds if we gave them a "good faith" school choice and understood we might need to change it. Also - have you directly asked the schools why they're still waiting on federal data if you already have your SAI? That sounds suspicious to me. Some schools drag their feet on aid packages for admitted students who haven't committed yet (shady but happens).

After weeks of trying to reach someone at Federal Student Aid about our missing data, I finally got through using Claimyr (claimyr.com). Their service connected me to an actual FSA agent in about 20 minutes when I'd been unable to get through for days. You can see how it works in this video: https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ The agent was able to see that our FAFSA had a technical flag that was preventing the data from being sent to two of our schools. They fixed it on the spot and said the schools should receive everything within 3-5 business days. Might be worth trying if you're desperate to get this resolved quickly for those scholarship deadlines.

Here's something important to understand: schools are required to honor outside scholarships, but they can adjust their own institutional aid when you receive outside money. This is called "displacement" and it's a common practice. Some schools will reduce loans first (best case), others will reduce grants (worst case), and some have a mixed approach. If you're trying to decide between schools without complete packages, ask each financial aid office specifically about their scholarship displacement policy. For example, if School A displaces loans and School B displaces grants, School A might be a better financial choice even if their initial offer appeared less generous. This could help you make a more informed decision while waiting for official packages.

This whole FAFSA system is BROKEN!!! My daughter lost a $5000 scholarship last month because of these exact issues. The Department of Education should be held accountable for this disaster. They had THREE EXTRA MONTHS to get the new system working and still failed miserably. College costs are already impossible for middle class families and now their incompetence is literally taking money out of students' pockets. I've written to my congressman and senator about this. We all should.

Quick update for anyone following this thread - I just got off the phone with my daughter's top choice school. After explaining our scholarship deadline situation, they agreed to provide an estimated aid package by Friday based on our SAI and 2022 tax info they already have. The financial aid officer said they're doing this for many families because of the FAFSA delays. BE PERSISTENT with your schools!

my cousin works in finanical aid and she said most schools actyally have all the data they need to make a basic aid package but they wait for everything to be official so they dont have to deal with adjustments later. its all about reducing their workflow not helping students

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone's advice, we've made progress! All three scholarship organizations agreed to extend their deadlines to May 15th after I sent them news articles about the FAFSA delays and a letter from my daughter's high school counselor. Both universities have also agreed to provide preliminary aid packages by the end of this week. I also tried Claimyr as suggested and got through to the Federal Student Aid office in about 25 minutes. The agent confirmed there was an issue with our FAFSA data transmission to schools and has fixed it. The schools should receive everything within 3-5 business days. This community has been incredibly helpful - thank you all for helping us navigate this stressful situation!