After a dismal year for federal student aid, it appears FAFSA applications are mostly back on track.

The U.S. Department of Education says more than one and a half million families have been able to file a form since enrollment opened November 21st.

Now, that's a major turnaround from last year when glitches to the rollout of a new version of the form trapped students in a computer nightmare, causing many to file more than three months late.

So far, though, the 2025 26 school year appears to be off to a better start.

But will it last?

We turn to our education and child welfare writer Hannah GROSS for more.

Hannah, hey, good to see you.

So by all accounts, it looks like anyway, the form is up and running somewhat successfully.

What do you know?

What can you tell us?

Yes, the form launched on November 21st, which was about ten days before the target date of December 1st, but still lagging behind the traditional launch date of October 1st, when students can normally start filling out federal financial aid forms.

And have there been any glitches?

What type of proactive measures has the Department of Ed taken to make sure that the bungled rollout from last year, you know, doesn't hit another snag this year?

So far, the Department of Education says everything is running smoothly.

They've added a lot of staff at their call centers, almost a thousand staff right now, which part of the busiest time of year for people to fill it out because some aid is awarded on a first come first served basis and those staff members are available to answer questions in English and in Spanish.

There's also translation available for other languages, and the call center has expanded hours from last year.

I wonder, though, I mean, it was still almost two months after the rollout was supposed to happen.

Has that impacted any students, particularly the students who need this funding the most?

It's hard to say what the impact has been so far by about mid-December.

So a few weeks after it opened, 1.5 million students had filled out FAFSA, but it's not due until June 30th.

So it's hard to say what final completion numbers will be.

Although students should fill it out as soon as they can to get access to aid.

What do you think, Hannah?

Based off of all your reporting, the biggest lessons were that were learned from really essentially what was a failed I mean, a failure in terms of rolling this out.

This more, you know, the simpler form.

I think the federal government learned the importance of having that October 1st deadline so students can apply for aid early and find out all of the information they have available to them before deciding if they want to pursue college, where they would want to go to college.

So there was actually a bipartisan bill introduced that requires FAFSA to be posted and open by October 1st each year called the FAFSA DEADLINE Act.

So how much of an impact did this have?

When we think back to all of the stories that you covered?

I mean, how many students didn't get to apply?

Who needed to who wanted to?

Do we have those type of metrics now?

We do.

And that's all in our reporting that's posted online.

The number of students who filled out FAFSA was down and Pell Grants, which is federal money for students to attend college.

That was down as well because students didn't fill out the aid applications the same way they used to in the past.

So, I mean, by how much I believe it was quite a few.

I think it was around 10%.

So when we look at that then, Hannah, I mean, you went to schools, you talk to parents.

What type of real life impact did that have?

I mean, some students were faced with the May 1st decision day to let colleges know whether they wanted to attend or not.

And they didn't know how much college would cost them.

So it's very difficult to sign on to attending college for one year or four years when maybe the price tag is tens of thousands of dollars.

If you were paying out of pocket and you don't know how much aid you're going to get from the federal government, from the state of New Jersey or from the college or university that you're interested in.

Yeah.

What do you expect for the year ahead in terms of this?

I mean, were you able to get in touch with anyone from the Education Department to get their take?

I mean, the Education Department spokespeople are saying that things are running smoothly this year.

One thing that's new in New Jersey is that high school seniors will be required to fill out FAFSA in order to graduate.

And in the past, there have not been high rates of a completion among New Jersey high schoolers.

So schools will really need to get those rates up if they want kids to be able to graduate and not be held back because of this requirement.

Wow.

Yeah.

And get their counselors on board to be able to help them.

All right.

You can check out all of Hannah's reporting on this on our website.

NJSpotlightNews.org Hannah, good to see you.

Thank you so much, Bri.