The Department of Education announced that the new 2024-2025 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form will be available “by December 31, 2023.” While higher education has been waiting for this date to be announced, and no specific date has actually been provided yet, perhaps the most important revelation from the Department is that once students are able to complete the new FAFSA form in December, there will be a four-to-six-week delay in processing the final Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR).

Upon completion of the FAFSA, students will receive a confirmation page with their Student Aid Index (SAI) calculation and Pell Grant eligibility, as well as an email confirmation. However, institutions will not receive students’ ISIRs until the end of January, at the earliest. Department officials expect this lag time to decrease thereafter until it matches current ISIR delivery times, but it remains unclear how quickly that will occur.

Additionally, the Department said that direct transmission of FAFSA data to some state financial aid programs, and the ability for unpaid preparers to complete the FAFSA on behalf of students, are being suspended and will not be available until next year. The state aid suspension will affect the following states: Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont, per the National College Attainment Network.

The announcement also included new data on the state-level impact of the FAFSA changes to Pell Grant students, additional information on processing timelines for institutions, a new progress tracking page, and an updated Federal Student Aid Estimator.

NAICU is continuing to work with the Department to gather the impact of these changes for the private, nonprofit sector, and what, if anything, the agency can do to communicate to students about the lag time between FAFSA completion and when institutions will have their information.