Indiana students encouraged to set up Federal Student Aid accounts ASAP after FAFSA debacle

Due to the botched and delayed rollout of the 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, Noble, a counselor at Tell City Jr.-Sr. High School in the Tell City-Troy Township School Corporation, often struggled to explain these delayed packages to students during the spring, right as they had to make decisions about going to college.

“There were very few financial aid award letters that I saw that I was able to help students go through and interpret to help them understand,” she said.

This year, the federal government has once again delayed the FAFSA’s availability. The U.S. Department of Education was supposed to release the 2025-26 FAFSA on Oct. 1, but now the final form might not be available until Dec. 1; right now, people are testing it in small groups.

In the interim, Indiana education organizations are encouraging families to set up Federal Student Aid accounts, which are a required first step to receiving aid, as soon as possible.

Doing so will help more families be ready to go when the new FAFSA becomes available, and will make it easier for students to understand their financial aid options. Even with the form’s recent woes, state higher education officials say Indiana’s push last year for families to set up these IDs relatively early was successful.

In fact, while FAFSA completion rates for the Class of 2024 nationwide fell nearly 9% so far compared with a year ago, Indiana’s had fallen just 1.6% as of Oct. 25, the smallest decline of any state.

The strategy of focusing on setting up those student aid IDs is something Indiana’s higher education community wants to replicate this year with events for students and families, said Michelle Ashcraft, chief program officer at the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

“While federal delays in processing the FAFSA are not within the control of the states, encouraging students and families to create their FSA IDs as early as possible is one way to be proactive in the process from causing a preventable delay on an already delayed process,” she said.

School events planned about Federal Student Aid IDs

As of Oct. 25, Indiana ranked 27th among the 50 states for the percentage of the Class of 2024 that had completed the FAFSA — 50% of students had done so, according to the National College Attainment Network.

Indiana ranked 38th among the 50 states for the percentage of students in the Class of 2023 that completed the FAFSA, and 26th in year-over-year change, with an increase of 1.8%.

This past summer, colleges continued to have difficulty getting financial aid correct and sending the information to families, said William Wozniak, vice president of communications and student services at INvestEd, which provides free FAFSA help in-person and via phone.

However, he and Ashcraft believe their organizations made the best of the 2024-25 FAFSA filing situation under the circumstances.

“Despite all of the challenges last year, we feel like all of our outreach efforts, in combination with having the new requirement for seniors to file, mitigated some of those challenges,” said Ashcraft. “We are going into this cycle feeling pretty positive.”

In the weeks before the 2025-26 FAFSA release, the state Commission for Higher Education is reaching out to stakeholders and partners across the state to get the message out about creating Federal Student Aid IDs.

INvestEd is working with schools to turn previously scheduled events focused on completing the FAFSA into FSA ID creation events.

“At those events, we also sit and have time to talk with the families about questions they have about the FAFSA that’s going to launch in a month or two,” Wozniak said. “Getting their ducks in a row, getting other things set, questions that they have about how to fund education with the least debt.”

Noble, the Tell City counselor, sends an INvestEd document to seniors and their families every year to get them started on the FAFSA.

“It has a place where you can put in the student FSA ID and then the parent FSA ID usernames and passwords. So it’s all in one spot,” she said. “And it has a lot of useful information on, here’s what you need when you go to file the FAFSA, these are all the documents you need to have on hand.”

INvestEd is also scheduling new events at schools after Dec. 1 to help families fill out the 2025-26 FAFSA once it’s released.

Tina McCloud, a counselor at Mt. Vernon High School in the Metropolitan School District of Mt. Vernon, said she’s also focused on helping students and parents create FSA IDs now and planning events after the form goes live later.

“We will also host a parent session in January or February where parents can come in, and we will have staff available to help them complete the application. Students can receive help with the application process throughout the school day,” she said.

Ashcraft, who previously worked at Purdue University, believes the timing of the form’s availability on or before Dec. 1 might actually be beneficial, even though it represents a delay for the 2025-26 FAFSA.

“We used to see, at least for the current college students who were filing, large numbers of students who would wait until the holidays or winter recess to file,” she said. “So [Dec. 1] being the kickoff may play in our favor, not just as a state, but as a country, just because people will be close to their families.”

Officials share hopes for this year’s FAFSA

Besides promoting FSA ID creation and reminding people that April 15 is Indiana’s priority deadline, Ashcraft stresses that despite hesitancy about filing the FAFSA, “more students than ever before are qualifying for aid. And for all of those who are qualifying, more students are qualifying for maximum financial aid.”

For Noble, financial aid packages coming out on schedule this time around would be a great benefit.

“We just want to be able to help students the best that we can and understand what that financial aid means. And it’s all timing, being able to do that. The earlier the form can be completed, the sooner the schools are able to do their part and then they can keep up with their deadlines, too,” she said.