A delay has been issued on university access to student FAFSA records, causing student aid packages to be postponed.
On Jan. 31, 2024, students received an email from the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid stating that they have been notified of an extended delay in the reception of Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) records until the first half of March.
Higher education institutions, including the University of Wyoming, were expecting to start receiving student FAFSA records in late January. Due to the changes being instilled by the FAFSA Simplification Act (enacted in 2021 and amended in 2022), the student information will not be released to universities until March.
Without the information, financial aid packages provided by the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid are expected to be delayed as well.
“Now that the delay is pushed to mid March, that pushes our timeline of being able to help students [with] any aid that they’re qualifying for that’s need-based,” Director of Scholarships and Financial Aid Anna Terfehr said.
Typically, students would be able to see their financial aid within two weeks of the university receiving their information, usually early in the year, but due to the delay, students aren’t expected to see their financial aid until April at the earliest.
“The two-week timeline would have been a typical year, but with all the changes that they did to the form, there is going to be changes that every higher education institution’s own student information systems [will undergo],” Terfehr said. “We then will have to start adjusting our systems to account for the changes that are coming our way.”
Terfehr still encourages students to fill out a FAFSA form despite any delays in order to receive financial aid information as soon as possible.
Updated information on FAFSA changes can be found here.
