EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – The University of Texas at El Paso and El Paso Community College financial aid experts will be hosting a workshop on Saturday, April 20 to help students navigate the challenges with the rollout of the new FAFSA form.
The workshop will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Region 19 Education Service Center, 6611 Boeing Dr.
It is open to all students across the Borderland including high-school students looking to fill out the form for the first time.
“Expect presentations and one-on-one support. We have computer labs if you don’t have a computer. Although if you do have one, we also encourage students to bring out their devices so that we can help them submit the FAFSA,” said UTEP Vice President of Enrollment Management Dr. Amanda Vasquez-Vicario.
Vasquez-Vicario explained that when the federal government overhauled the FAFSA application in 2023 for the first time in decades, the changes created many complications for students trying to fill out the form.
The form’s questions and technical structure were completely altered, Vasquez-Vicario said. But most the most notable change was that the FAFSA form now draws students’ information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) database.
As a result of these changes, Vasquez-Vicario said the rollout of the new FAFSA had a very rough launch and was delayed three months. The FAFSA application was normally released on Oct. 1 of every year, but in 2023 it was not released until Dec. 31 through a soft launch.
“It wasn’t quite ready to go. There were still a lot of hiccups. The website itself didn’t have the capacity for all of the students who were hitting the site. So students were sent into virtual waiting rooms. Some students were not able to submit,” Vasquez-Vicario said.
Through a town hall meeting earlier this year in February, Vasquez-Vicario said they discovered that the most affected were students from mixed-status families.
“The student is a U.S. citizen and has a Social Security number, but the parents maybe don’t have Social Security numbers. Those families weren’t able to submit the FAFSA until very late March, early April. And some students have just had a lot of other issues with corrections. They have to go in and correct the FAFSA. So it’s been a really rough rollout,” Vasquez-Vicario said.
But for students who have faced these obstacles, Vasquez-Vicario said they are now equipped to help them with their situation.
“We finally have a solution for that. So if a student had been waiting, if a family had been hesitant, now’s the right time to submit the FAFSA. Come out and we can help you,” Vasquez-Vicario said.
Vasquez-Vicario said other students have also worried about the FAFSA timeline because of its delays, or have just had trouble completing the form. She encouraged students to come out next week to get the help they need.
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