First person: The botched rollout of the FAFSA has hurt families like mine

In First Person, Chalkbeat features personal essays from teachers, students, parents, and others who think and write about public education.

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As I sat at my dining room table, I dialed the toll-free number, hoping today would be the day someone would actually answer. Instead, I heard the words that have been ringing in my ears for the past few months. The helpline received a large number of calls. Call again later, the automated message urged, before ending with an unceremonious “Goodbye.”

The more I heard that message, the more worried I became.

I knew I wasn’t alone in this experience, and that somehow made it even worse. Thousands of high school students who needed financial help to attend college were unable to fill out the federal aid application — the same application that the U.S. Department of Education insisted could now be filled out “faster and easier.”

“Faster and easier” would be the last words I would use to describe my family’s experience with the application commonly known as the FAFSA. It’s all because of nine little numbers that not all applying family members have: a Social Security number. Parents without one were initially unable to submit the required form.

The FAFSA, which normally opens in October, was postponed due to the updates and released in late December. This slowed the process for anyone applying for federal financial aid, not just families where not all members have Social Security numbers. But when the application finally went live, many students seeking help breathed a sigh of relief.

At that time, those with an undocumented parent were told to call a federal government number to verify their parents’ identities.

That’s how I found myself memorizing that annoying automated message that ended with “Goodbye.” After calling the number more than twenty times in a month, I received an answer one day. I was sitting in my academic advisor’s office when the February chill crept into the room. I was surprised to hear a woman’s voice on the other end of the line. I have explained my family’s situation as clearly and concisely as possible. The woman told me that my parents would have to make the call or be present themselves – something that proved difficult during their workday.

The conversation ended there and I went back to class. I breathed in and out, trying to push the FAFSA from my thoughts. But like the phone call, it felt hopeless. I was sitting in class and made no move to sit down.

“So how did it go?” my friends asked discreetly.

“They said I couldn’t do it,” I replied, not realizing until then how emotional I was.

Tears started rolling down my cheeks. They weren’t tears of sadness or even hopelessness; they were tears of anger. I was angry – I am angry – about the jumbled applications and the disregard for thousands of first-generation Americans.

The stress was written all over my face, and when my teacher came by to offer kind and encouraging words, I tried to look ahead to the moment when my FAFSA was finally completed.

After negative media attention about the failed rollout of the FAFSA, the administration did take steps to correct its mistakes, but that took months. They have moved the verification process to email. At that point we had to email passports, driver’s licenses and bills with my parents’ name and home address. The verification process seemed endless until my parents’ account was finally verified in early March.

When I received that email, I logged in as quickly as possible, grateful that this process was almost over. But even after my parents’ accounts were verified, the portal turned up empty, once again preventing me from submitting my FAFSA. I felt my body heating up and my face turning bright red. I had taken all the right steps. I thought I was finally getting out of the FAFSA maze. I was wrong.

With only a few weeks left to decide where I would spend the next four years of my life—the deadline to attend college is May 1—the FAFSA felt like my worst enemy.

It wasn’t until early April, after months of phone calls, paperwork, and meetings with my college counselor, that I was finally able to submit my federal aid application. My application has arrived, which is a relief. But like many other students in the same situation, I wonder if I will ever know what my financial aid packages would look like at some of the schools I have been accepted to.

Despite all the obstacles I have had to overcome in recent months, I am one of the lucky ones. I was recently offered scholarships from two private liberal arts colleges, allowing me to bypass the government aid process altogether. It is because of these scholarships, and these scholarships alone, that the stress of the FAFSA does not hang over me. But my happiness reminds me of the other first-generation students who don’t have these options.

Coming from an immigrant family, I have known since I was a little girl that my family and our experiences were not like most of my friends. I knew this when my friends talked about their vacations abroad or when both their parents showed up at parent-teacher conferences. The differences became especially apparent during the college application process.

I remember being at school with my friends when they expressed relief at being done with their applications, personal essays, paperwork, and FAFSA. Now all they had to do was wait. Everyone agreed – everyone except me.

One friend even suggested throwing a party to celebrate.

I wondered why nine figures made such a world of difference in our experiences. Months after that hangout session, I continue to have those and other questions. Questions like: Why do students from immigrant families have to jump through so many hoops? Why was our family, our experience, overlooked when this new “easier” FAFSA was implemented?

I know the tremendous privilege I have to pursue higher education, thanks to the support of my family, my academic advisor, and the private institutions that provide me with financial assistance. Yet self-doubt sometimes creeps up like a shadow. I wonder why I try so hard to get into college when some of the processes that make college possible don’t seem to value people like me and families like mine.

Miriam Galicia is a senior at The Institute for Cooperative Education and is one 2023-2024 Chalkbeat Student Voices fellow. She will attend Skidmore College in the fall. As a prospective first-generation college student, she appreciates the opportunity to pursue higher education that previous generations of her family did not receive.