DENVER — Tens of thousands of Colorado students are awaiting the release of a delayed federal application that will determine their financial aid for the upcoming school year.
The Department of Education is working to make its Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) simpler to complete. Prospective and current college students who typically get access to the form in early October are still waiting for the new version to be released.
"I keep having to put that off on the list, whereas normally I like getting things done ahead of time," MSU Denver Mechanical Engineering Technology student Linda Quintana said. "You cannot get any sort of scholarship without that form. It's very important."
She said her college education would not have been possible without financial aid -- and the FAFSA is key to both institutional and private assistance. Waiting to see how much aid she might qualify for in her final semester before graduation is stressful.
"My whole education is based off of scholarships, so without financial aid, I don't think that going to college would be possible for me," Quintana said.
The delay is also causing headaches for organizations that help students fill out the form.
"This year we are just sort of holding our breath and waiting," Natasha Garfield with the Denver Scholarship Foundation said. "We’re doing as much as we can to prepare."
Ordinarily, her organization would host a dozen financial aid workshops to assist Denver students with filling out the FAFSA this time of year. Instead, she said, they must wait like everyone else.
"I've heard from a number of students that they just don't even know what next year is going to look like because of this uncertainty," she said.
Garfield recommended students do as much as they can to prepare ahead of the release of the new application, including gathering recent tax information and making an account online.
Colleges, she said, are expected to stick to their typical deadline schedule, which will mean a mad dash to fill out the FAFSA as soon as it becomes available.
"Get ready," she said. "We are anticipating that as soon as that form opens up we need to have our plans in place so we can really hit the ground running and make sure that our families and students have all the support that they need."
For now, those families and students just have to wait. The latest word from the federal government is that the form will be available sometime in December.
Quintana plans to fill it out as soon as she can.
"Just to help that peace of mind knowing that that's in and there won't be consequences of that affecting my financial aid," she said.
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