A New Financial-Aid Timeline Could Reshape Admissions. Here’s How Colleges Are Preparing.
When the Obama administration announced that starting this fall, students would be able to file the famously complex Free Application for Federal Student Aid months earlier using older tax data, some predicted that the move could bring big changes to the admissions process. It’s too soon to know if they were right: Students can’t start filing the "early Fafsa," as some are calling it, until next month.But many colleges have worked to get ahead of the new process. More than two-thirds of them plan to make significant changes in their enrollment procedures because of it, according to a survey by the education-technology company Cegment Inc. Others are taking a wait-and-see approach.