Student aid packages delayed by miscalculation at FAFSA

The Department of Education, which oversees the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, recently made a technical error when estimating its applicants’ aid eligibility. The error will require the resubmission of over 200,000 applications for financial aid this spring. As a result, financial aid offices at universities across the country, including NC State, are extending their timelines for college decisions and application processing. 

When filling out a financial aid application, students must list their assets. This data system feeds into the Student Aid Index, a way for colleges to determine how much money should be given to students. All student aid packages that were delivered before March 21 had an inaccurate calculation of what a student could contribute.

Krista Ringler, associate vice provost and director in the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid, provides leadership and strategic vision for the department. She said the office was notified of the miscalculations soon after receiving information on student aid eligibility.

“March is when we started getting anything of substance that we could work with, to communicate to students what they might receive, but shortly after that is when we were notified we've got records with data integrity issues, incorrect records,” Ringler said. 

In other words, the Student Aid Index was lower than expected. The index determines how much aid a student receives through grants, work-study and loans. The lower it is, the more money students are eligible to receive from the University. Financial aid officers detected the error because of how low the indexes were on average.

“In reviewing records we received, the data did not appear to be in congruence with what we knew the formula calculation to be,” Ringler said. “This was recorded, and our office detected it while looking through and scrubbing the records we had received.”

Since the error was discovered, student applications have been separated into two groups. One group is those whose applications will not need to be approved for data integrity issues because they align with a list provided by the United States Department of Education stating that their application is acceptable. The other group of applications must now be reapproved by the University because they were affected by data integrity issues. 

Jamie Pendergrass is an associate director at the Financial Aid Office and oversees all loans for the University. He oversees the Pell Grant program, helps with enrollment reporting and runs the IT operations of the NC State financial aid offices. 

“The Department of Education provided us with what they called a fastball,” Pendergrass said. “UUID is a unique indicator … they provided two lists of those IDs and we just matched them to one of the passwords that we received.”

Since some students depend on financial aid to attend college, the prolongation of this process can delay their decision processes. These “unforced errors,” as described by an administrator at the National Association of Student Financial Aid, are another roadblock delaying students’ higher education progress.

College financial aid officers can only work with valid data that is provided by the U.S. Department of Education, so school officials cannot do their job if provided with the wrong numbers to work with. 

“We've been in close collaboration with our undergraduate admissions office to send communications to students and parents,” Ringler said. “We've offered some opportunities for assistance with FAFSA completion through FAFSA completion events. The biggest thing that we're doing is trying to figure out if there are groups of students that we can move forward on.”

This year’s application cycle has been delayed once already. The application opened in late December instead of October as it usually does. These delays have prompted NC State to extend the decision deadline for prospective students from May 1 to May 15.

“The University is willing to work with individual students who don't receive financial aid and offer enough time for them to decide,” Ringler said.

NC State, among other universities, is making its way through the reevaluation of applications flagged by the Department of Education. For financial help from a counselor at NC State, visit Enrollment Management and Services.