FAFSA is officially out, and everyone is cautiously optimistic

The Education Department on Thursday officially released the federal student aid application for the 2025-2026 academic year, ahead of schedule and after an extensive testing period to avoid another tumultuous rollout of the financial aid form.

Since the beginning of the week, the department quietly made the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA, available for all families to fill out during a final round of testing. The financial aid form traditionally goes live in October, but the department pushed the launch date to Dec. 1 to allow a small number of students to complete the application and identify any problems. Congress on Thursday approved legislation requiring the Education Department to release the financial aid form on Oct. 1 moving forward.

“Last year’s FAFSA cycle was a challenging one, with delays and frustrations as we worked to overhaul a complex and antiquated system,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on a call with reporters Thursday. “I felt that frustration, not only as secretary … I was one of those parents that went through the FAFSA process with my daughter. I knew it had to be fixed. We got to work. We listened. We learned. We took action.”

The Education Department is trying to redeem itself after the disastrous launch of the redesigned FAFSA this past December. Technical glitches, inaccurate calculations and bureaucratic delays prevented students from completing the form and receiving timely financial aid offers. There were even some students who didn’t have financial aid by the time school started this fall. College access and financial aid groups worried that the department missing the Oct 1. release date foreshadowed another year of endless delays, but now many say the thorough, four-part test period gives them confidence that this cycle will run smoother than the last.

“There were no major problems during our tests,” said Christine Miller, director of college advising at the Scholarship Fund of Alexandria in Virginia, one of the community-based organizations that participated in the beta testing. “I have to give [the office of Federal Student Aid, or FSA] credit; they listened, they fixed things in real time … it couldn’t have gone better.”

Miller said more than 100 students who attended a FAFSA event last month were able to submit applications, and another 30 did so this week. That includes students whose parents are undocumented and lack a Social Security number, a population of applicants who kept encountering problems with the 2024-2025 FAFSA through no fault of their own.

Since Oct. 1, through four rounds of testing, more than 167,000 students have submitted their 2025-2026 financial aid forms, according to the department, which has processed the forms and sent records to more than 5,200 colleges nationwide. The agency said 95% of applicants reported that they were satisfied with the experience, and 90% said it took a reasonable time to complete.

The Education Department included a variety of current and prospective college students in its FAFSA tests, including students who are homeless, incarcerated, veterans or have undocumented parents. That way, the agency could see how the financial aid form functioned for an array of applicants. About 17 million students fill out the FAFSA in a typical year.

At the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara in California, president and chief executive Melinda Cabrera said families who participated in the organization’s FAFSA tests were overall relieved that the new application was easier to complete than the last one.

“I had one parent come up to me and say, ‘Last year was so hard on us, and this year I’m just so grateful that we’re able to get it done early and that we had the help,’ ” Cabrera said. “Having FSA there in person to help our advisers and the families navigate some of the hiccups and questions was so invaluable.”

Roughly two-thirds of the students who participated in the beta testing at the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara submitted the financial aid form without incident, Cabrera said. The rest either didn’t have the correct information or needed a parent to contribute to the form to complete their submission.

Jill Desjean, a senior policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said the financial aid officers she’s spoken with who have received FAFSA records can upload them without incident and have yet to report errors in the calculations, which was a persistent problem in the past financial aid cycle.

“I’m pretty cautiously optimistic that the testing has panned out well and that [the department has] addressed a lot of the issues that held up things last year,” Desjean said.

She is especially grateful that the department has rolled out all functions of the FAFSA at once, instead of the previous process that had students waiting months to make corrections after submitting the form and prevented colleges from receiving applicant records in a reasonable time.

The Education Department said call center hold times were under one minute on the first day the form became widely available, and less than 0.1% of calls were abandoned.

That is a marked difference from earlier this year, when students and parents complained of dropped calls or waiting hours to speak to a representative in the Federal Student Aid office. A Government Accountability Office investigation of the botched FAFSA rollout found that 4 million of the 5.4 million calls to the department went unanswered during the first five months of 2024 because of understaffing.

To remedy that problem, the department has nearly doubled its call center staff and added evening and Saturday hours to accommodate an anticipated increase in call volume. Still, the department cautions that callers may temporarily experience longer-than-usual wait times when there is a surge of calls. The department will continue adding agents in the coming weeks. Assistance will also be available in 11 languages this year.

FAFSA executive adviser Jeremy Singer said the department did not uncover any “new critical bugs” during its multi-phased testing, but was able to diagnose and fix issues from the last year such as students getting stuck on certain pages of the application. He said the department is still working to improve the user experience.

“What they’re seeing now are bugs where you put your mouse in one place, and it pops up in a different place. Not perfect but not things that would prevent a student from being able to complete” the application, said Desjean of NASFAA.

Completing the FAFSA is a critical step for anyone considering education after high school. The financial aid application is the gateway to billions of dollars in scholarships, grants and loans from the federal government, states, foundations and colleges.

Because of changes to the formula used to determine financial need in the redesigned FAFSA, more middle-income students are qualifying for Pell Grants – aid for undergraduates with exceptional financial need. In October, the Education Department said that despite the flawed rollout of the 2024-2025 financial aid form, 10 percent more students were poised to receive Pell Grants, which can be used for technical training and academic pursuits.

With a greater chance of qualifying for grants and getting through the application with ease, Desjean hopes more families are encouraged to fill out the FAFSA this year. She and other college advocates said there are some steps first-time users should take before filling out the form, including checking out the “parent wizard” portal to determine which guardians should contribute to the form.

Kim Cook, chief executive of the National College Attainment Network, said all new applicants – students and guardians – should create their username and password a few days before trying to complete the application because it takes time for the department to process those “FSA IDs.” Many of her member organizations have held events in the past two months to help families create the ID to prepare for the launch.

While Cook and other advocates would have preferred an Oct. 1 release of the FAFSA, she said the quality and functionality of the form was worth the wait. The department said it is on track to release the next FAFSA on the traditional Oct. 1 deadline.

“The piece that’s really important to me is the full functionality will allow aid offers to come in their traditional time frame,” Cook said. “That’s huge, and it feels like we’re in a much different place than last year.”