On the first Monday in August, a young woman named Jessica checked her campus email, hoping to see that her financial-aid offer had finally arrived. She checked her personal email, too, just in case. Once again, nothing.
Seven months after completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, she still didn’t have the document that would show her cost of attendance and unlock the federal Pell Grant she needed to stay enrolled in college. And because she lacked an official offer, she hadn’t been able to renew a private scholarship — $5,000 a year — before the deadline, in July. Though she still hoped to receive some or all of that money, she worried that she wouldn’t get any.
Jessica is a rising sophomore majoring in marine science at an East Coast college, where she has thrived despite what she lacks: a permanent address and a parent who supports her. As the fall semester loomed, she felt frustrated — with the government, with her financial-aid office, with the whole Sisyphean slog. “It’s been pretty draining,” she said.
Jessica’s experience reveals the cumulative impact of multiple failures, by the U.S. Department of Education and her own college, that had stranded her in financial-aid limbo. Because she is wary of calling attention to her circumstances and upsetting anyone on her campus, The Chronicle agreed not to publish the student’s last name or identify her institution. It confirmed her story by reviewing copies of multiple emails she exchanged with her financial-aid office, and by interviewing advocates at a nonprofit group who’ve been advising her. The details provide a rare glimpse of the federal-aid crisis and its impact on a subgroup of students who are often overlooked.
All summer, FAFSA problems have continued to fall most heavily on applicants in dire circumstances, especially unaccompanied homeless youth. That’s the official term for students under the age of 24 who aren’t in the physical custody of a parent or guardian, and who are either experiencing homelessness or are at risk of it and supporting themselves financially. Long delays in the processing of financial-aid offers have compounded the uncertainty such students must contend with. Making matters worse, several advocacy groups and college counselors report that some financial-aid offices have been forcing unaccompanied homeless students to jump through unnecessary hoops — in violation of federal law.
Jessica, 19, has long relied on friends and relatives for a place to sleep, like plenty of college students do. A federal report released last year found that 8 percent of undergraduates experienced homelessness in 2019-20. A recent national study found that during a 12-month period, 4.2 million youth and young adults between the ages of 18-25 experienced homelessness on their own. Among the latter, 29 percent were either enrolled at a postsecondary institution or participating in another educational program.
In her freshman year, Jessica made the dean’s list with a 3.6 GPA while working part-time and playing a competitive club sport. This summer, she worked two jobs. “It’s not like I’m not trying,” she said. She was stuck just because the machinery of the higher-education system had catastrophically malfunctioned.
Two weeks before the first day of classes, Jessica was at the mercy of a bureaucracy with busted wheels. She couldn’t make them turn faster. She could only wait.
Jessica’s recent frustrations reflect a truth: Students who are on their own and without a home have long struggled to complete the FAFSA and find their way through a thicket of institutional requirements. To reduce their burdens, the federal government over time has made some key adjustments to the federal-aid process. The most significant one has to do with dependency status.
For FAFSA purposes, most undergraduates who are under the age of 24 by December 31 of the financial-aid award year are considered dependent students. Therefore, they must provide their parents’ financial information.
But in some cases, that’s not possible due to unusual circumstances. Students who’ve been abandoned by or become estranged from their parents, for instance, can submit the form without parent information unless they’ve been adopted. So, too, can those with abusive or incarcerated parents.
In such instances, financial-aid officers can use their professional judgment to grant students a dependency override, allowing them to file the FAFSA as an independent student. But applying for an override is onerous and typically requires a written explanation of a student’s circumstances and why they can’t provide their parents’ financial information, plus documentation that might include legal filings, law-enforcement records, and letters from counselors and social workers. It’s long been a tedious, even traumatizing, process for students.
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The botched rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid was bad news for the many colleges that must meet enrollment targets to balance their budgets. It also nixed many students’ plans for college.
Up until 15 years ago, unaccompanied homeless youth had to apply for a dependency override. But the task tended to be especially difficult for such students, said Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, known as NASFAA: “What became clear is that they had different circumstances and that they needed their own individualized pathway through the FAFSA process.”
They got one in 2009, when federal legislation amending the Higher Education Act took effect. In the updated law, the definition of an independent student was changed to include for the first time those who are unaccompanied and either experiencing homelessness, or self-supporting and at risk of it. To verify their status, students now just need to get a document, called a “determination,” from one of a handful of authorized entities, such as their school’s homeless liaison.
If applying for a dependency override is a long march through red tape, obtaining a determination is meant to be a short walk. But there are caveats. One is that schools often under-identify students experiencing homelessness, according to experts who work with unaccompanied youth. So, some students don’t know that they fit an official description of homelessness, or know what a determination is or why they might need one when applying for federal aid. Some find it difficult to get a determination; others simply can’t. And some students start experiencing homelessness after filing the FAFSA.
There’s another wrinkle. When an applicant indicates that they are an unaccompanied homeless youth lacking a determination of their status, a financial-aid officer “must review the student’s circumstances and make the determination themselves,” based on a student’s written statement or a documented interview with the student, according to federal guidance.
And, once a student has a determination, a college must not request additional documentation from them unless there’s conflicting information about their status.
But as Jessica learned the hard way, the system doesn’t always work properly — and colleges don’t always comply with the law.
Growing up, Jessica experienced many disruptions due to homelessness, which can take various forms. The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act defines it as lacking “a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.” That might describe someone who’s staying at an emergency or transitional shelter, with friends or relatives (known as couch surfing or doubling up), or in hotels, motels, trailer parks, or campgrounds. They could be spending the night in a public or private place not typically used for sleeping, or living out of a car.
Jessica was a junior in high school when her father died, in 2022. Going to live with her mother, with whom she had no prior contact, she said, “wouldn’t have been a good situation” for her and her younger brother. So her aunt and uncle became their temporary guardians. She attended a public boarding school; during breaks, she crashed here and there with friends and relatives.
That fall, Jessica completed the FAFSA by herself. She hadn’t heard of the McKinney-Vento Act, which is supposed to guarantee that students experiencing homelessness have access to the services and support they need to succeed. She didn’t know that she fit the law’s definition of unaccompanied homeless youth. Though McKinney-Vento requires each school district to have a homeless liaison, it doesn’t guarantee that all students in need end up getting help. Jessica recalls that she had no contact with the liaison in her district.
So, when the teenager completed the 2023-24 FAFSA, she answered “No” to the three questions that asked if she had a determination from one of the entities listed. “I didn’t know that I had those resources,” she told The Chronicle, “or that I would be able to even qualify for them.”
Jessica answered the FAFSA’s questions to the best of her knowledge. “It was definitely, like, trial and error — figuring all of that out on my own,” she said. And her family situation was fluid: She told the college in an email that her aunt and uncle might end up adopting her.
That winter, a financial-aid officer at the college where Jessica would later enroll sent her an email inquiring about her status. Had she been adopted?
By then, Jessica had turned 18, at which point she and her relatives decided that adoption wasn’t necessary in her case. For one thing, she didn’t want to be a burden to her aunt and uncle, who had two children of their own (they did adopt her brother).
“I am no longer in the process of being adopted, and I will not be adopted,” Jessica replied to the financial-aid officer. “I have no relationship with my mother and my father is deceased. I will be financially responsible for myself.”
Though she didn’t realize it yet, Jessica fit the description of an unaccompanied homeless youth. At that point, the financial-aid office could have inquired further about her living situation. And it had the authority to go ahead and make a determination for her.
Instead, a financial-aid officer instructed Jessica to file for a dependency override. She had to complete and sign some forms; write a letter explaining her relationship with her mother and the last time they had contact; send a letter of support from someone with knowledge of her situation, such as a family member or friend, who could confirm that she was no longer in the process of being adopted; submit a signed statement “from a professional on official letterhead” attesting to her situation, specifically describing her relationship with her mother; and send in a copy of her father’s death certificate.
The task felt heavy and invasive. But Jessica submitted everything within a week. Her financial-aid offer came. She enrolled at the college last summer, eager to make friends, study hard, and start a new life.
In her first semester, Jessica met with a financial-aid officer to discuss her situation. By then, she had learned that she fit the official description of an unaccompanied homeless youth, and she wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t have to go through the dependency-override process a second time. “Because it sucked,” she said.
Jessica had no way of knowing that the FAFSA crisis was coming — and that one thing her college neglected to do for her would make the whole ordeal worse.
The FAFSA Simplification Act, which passed in 2020, overhauled the federal-aid processes and systems that deliver $120 billion a year in grants, work-study funds, and loans to 13 million students. The streamlined FAFSA, which went live at the end of 2023, was supposed to make applying for aid much easier.
Though the glitch-ridden rollout of the new form has proven disastrous, the overhaul of the federal-aid system included several changes meant to help unaccompanied homeless youth. For one, it expanded the number of entities that can provide a determination: The list includes directors and designees of emergency or transitional shelters, youth drop-in centers, and federal TRIO programs.
Previously, the FAFSA included three cumbersome questions about an applicant’s status; the revamped version includes just one two-part question that’s more clearly worded. And as of this financial-aid cycle, when an unaccompanied homeless student is determined to be independent, the college must presume they remain so for each subsequent aid cycle (unless their circumstances change or there’s conflicting information), meaning that students no longer have to re-verify their status each year that they’re enrolled.
Jordyn Roark welcomed those changes. She’s the director of youth leadership and scholarship at SchoolHouse Connection, a nonprofit group that supports students experiencing homelessness. She was previously an unaccompanied homeless youth herself.
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Roark, who graduated from college in 2018, said that each year she was enrolled, the financial-aid office told her she had to go through the dependency-override process to get federal aid. And each year, she brought a copy of federal guidance indicating that, as an unaccompanied homeless youth with a determination, she did not.
That guidance became law at the beginning of the 2023-24 FAFSA cycle. Still, Roark, who advises students trying to get to and through college, has seen some colleges continue to steer unaccompanied students dealing with homelessness into dependency overrides. “This issue is not new,” she said, “but it has been incredibly harmful, especially this year when students were already dealing with the FAFSA delays, because dependency overrides take longer to process.”
Roark and her colleagues at SchoolHouse Connection have been advising Jessica since early 2023, when she was still in high school. So they had a front-row seat during her second go-round with the FAFSA.
Jessica completed the 2024-25 application in January, not long after it became available, nearly three months later than usual. On the revamped form, the lone question pertaining to homelessness reads like this: “At any time on or after July 1, 2023, was the student unaccompanied and either (1) homeless or (2) self-supporting and at risk of being homeless?”
Jessica clicked “Yes.”
A follow-up question popped up, asking if she had a determination from one of the entities listed.
Jessica indicated that she did.
At that point, she had reason to think she wouldn’t get hung up by more red tape. Though colleges can request documentation of a student’s determination, they’re not required to. Under the law, what matters is that the student is experiencing homelessness — not the reasons why.
“The minute someone says, ‘I am an unaccompanied homeless youth,’ that’s it,” Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, told The Chronicle. “There’s a distinct category, there’s distinct guidance, and there’s a distinct process for them, and none of it involves more paperwork, and none of it involves an appeal. The entire purpose of the law is that they don’t have to get anything else, they don’t have to tell their story again and reopen all those deep, deep wounds.”
Jessica had tried to avoid having to tell her story to the financial-aid office once again. Soon after arriving on her campus last summer, she met with a financial-aid officer at her college to explain her circumstances — and discuss how she could avoid being put through the dependency-override process during the 2024-25 FAFSA cycle. She recalls being told that she didn’t need to do anything, and that the information she had provided previously would allow her to be processed as an unaccompanied homeless youth.
“I didn’t really know what to say to that, and so I was just like ‘OK,’” Jessica said. “But I knew that that wasn’t right.”
Months later, Jessica’s college once again asked for more documentation, even though she had indicated her status on the FAFSA, and even though her circumstances hadn’t changed. In May, Jessica emailed her financial-aid office to ask how she could confirm that she’s an unaccompanied homeless youth.
Later that month, she received an email stating “you are on the list to review for Dependency Override Renewal.” The same message told her that she might be better off answering “Yes” to the unusual-circumstances question in the future “instead of indicating homeless/at-risk, since we have already determined that you qualify.”
I felt like they were not wanting to believe me.
A subsequent message asked Jessica to provide additional information about her situation. She sent back a statement explaining that she’s an unaccompanied homeless youth with unstable housing, who stays with friends and family during breaks (“as otherwise I would have nowhere else to go”), who has been fully financially responsible for herself since her father died two years ago, and who for several years hasn’t had contact with her mother, “who has expressed that she does not and cannot support me in any way and is reluctant to provide any of her information.”
Jessica received a reply from the financial-aid office stating that it had forwarded her statement to an appeals committee, which would review it and determine if additional information is needed. “The review process,” it stated, “normally takes 2-3 weeks for processing.”
The exchange exasperated Jessica. “I felt like they were not wanting to believe me,” she said. “It’s really tiring to be like ‘Why aren’t you listening to me?’ and have to relive the same thing over and over again.”
In a year when an unprecedented federal-aid crisis capsized financial-aid offices and forced exhausted staff to scramble, the frustrations of unaccompanied homeless students might seem like just one more problem among many. But it’s important to know that those frustrations aren’t new. In 2016, the Government Accountability Office published a report describing the barriers that homeless and foster youth encounter en route to college. One finding was that colleges were making unnecessary and burdensome requests for documentation from students with a determination.
“It’s still very prevalent,” said Duffield at SchoolHouse Connection, “based on what we hear when we do trainings and what we hear from students.”
Duffield suspects that a lack of training could be to blame; in some cases, it might boil down to ignorance of the law and related guidance. But she thinks concerns about federal oversight play a role, too.
“There’s this sense of, ‘We’re going to get audited,’” Duffield said. “So when dealing with anyone who falls under the category of an independent student, it’s like ‘We’re going to be super, super strict about this.’”
McCarthy, at NASFAA, agreed with that rendering. “There’s definitely a training curve there with institutions that has been, and continues to be, a training challenge for us,” she said. “And concerns about the feds and auditors questioning any areas where there’s a judgment on the part of an institution has been a longstanding fear.”
Familiarity with the needs of students experiencing homelessness — and the rules governing their path through the federal-aid process — vary from campus to campus. “Some colleges have one homeless student every five years,” McCarthy said. “Others are really on top of all the federal guidance because they have a pretty regular population of homeless students.”
In mid-July, the Federal Student Aid office posted an announcement reminding colleges of their “roles and responsibilities related to dependency determinations for unaccompanied homeless youth” under the FAFSA Simplification Act. It was, some financial-aid experts said, a response to continuing confusion about the law — and a nudge to stop putting such students through the wringer.
By then, Jessica was worn down by months of waiting for her financial-aid offer.
One FAFSA snag led to another. When a dependency override happens, as Jessica learned, a college must make a “correction,” or adjustment, to an applicant’s federal-aid record before it can send them an aid offer. Many institutions rely on a process called “batch processing,” which enables financial-aid officers to accurately and efficiently submit corrections in bulk. Normally, that is available when the FAFSA goes live.
But this year, due to problems with the federal-aid system, colleges had to wait — and wait. In June, the department announced that institutions would be able to make batch corrections in the first half of August. Then, in late July, the department announced that colleges wouldn’t be able to do so at all for the remainder of the 2024-25 FAFSA cycle.
The news floored financial-aid staff members, many of whom had been anxiously waiting for batch processing to finally become available. Without it, they would instead have to submit manual corrections, a tedious and time-consuming chore. Beth Maglione, interim president and chief executive of NASFAA, described it in a recent podcast as “another gut punch to our membership.”
It was the same for Jessica, who understood that further delays in corrections would hold up her aid even longer. She knew that she was in that position only because her college had put her through a dependency override. She knew that she qualified for the maximum Pell Grant: $7,395 a year. And she knew that without it, her sophomore year in college just wouldn’t happen.
All summer, Jessica stayed busy behind the register at a Dollar General and also worked at a Tractor Supply. “Trying to run up my bag,” she said — to make as much money as she could before the fall semester began.
She needed both jobs to support herself, and she needed a car to get back and forth. But maintaining a car, she had learned, is expensive. Because she’s on her own, she had to cover every expense herself. Like optometrist appointments, which she paid for out of pocket because she lacks health insurance. Then there was her car insurance, gas, cell-phone bill, food, and clothing.
And toothpaste. “Usually, someone’s buying that for a student,” she said. “But I have to think about those expenses.”
As a chaotic financial-aid cycle dragged on, some students weren’t sure why they were stuck. In Atlanta, Ninfa Murillo has been advising several anxious applicants who, as of mid-August, were still waiting for a financial-aid offer from their colleges. “We’re seeing students who are stuck because of the challenge of colleges not being able to do batch corrections,” said Murillo, who works for Achieve Atlanta, a nonprofit that helps low-income students get to and through college. “Colleges are doing their best, but they’re backed up. We’re hearing from students who say, ‘We got everything in — we’re just waiting.’”
For weeks, Murillo had been advising a young man who had sought help after Atlanta Technical College, where he had just enrolled, told him there was a problem with his FAFSA. “He was hearing a lot of lingo, like, ‘You need to make a correction for your independent status,’” Murillo said. “He had no idea what that means. He just knew something wasn’t right.”
The student, whose first name is Shuntae, graduated from high school this spring. When he filled out the FAFSA this past winter, he answered “No” to the question about being unaccompanied and homeless. But then his mother died, in February. And he has since been living with his older sister and working full-time at the airport. Though he now fits the definition of an independent student, his FAFSA didn’t reflect that fact until Achieve Atlanta helped him update the form.
But Murillo said she wasn’t sure what else, if anything, the college might need from him to process his aid offer. His mother’s death certificate? Some other document? And must he provide a determination?
It gave me so much anxiety that I considered joining the military if it meant guaranteed aid.
Those questions loomed as Shuntae started his first week of classes, in mid-August. Though he told The Chronicle he was a little worried about his FAFSA status, he was trying to stay positive. Growing up, he didn’t think college was for him. “But when my mom passed,” he said, “her final wish was that she wanted me to step out of my comfort zone and go do more.”
Inspired by family members who work in welding, auto repair, and HVAC, Shuntae, who calls himself “hands-on,” decided to pursue a career in HVAC himself. “I wanted to do something that I know is gonna be good for generational wealth, for my niece, or for my kids in the future,” he said. He had come to see himself in a different way. He just needed his federal aid.
In another part of Georgia, a student named Kara had just started her freshman year at a public university she might not have chosen if the aid process had been running smoothly. Her experience with the FAFSA, she said, was unsettling: “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”
Kara, who has experienced homelessness on her own since she was 13, had long seen her education as the one thing that nobody could snatch away from her. She came to school every day, studied relentlessly, and maintained a 4.0 GPA. She completed the FAFSA right after it became available, hoping she would soon be able to compare financial-aid offers and settle on a college that felt like a good fit — and that wouldn’t burden her with student-loan debt.
But the clock ran out. Though Kara had acceptances from a handful of colleges, including some highly selective ones, she didn’t end up with a single financial-aid offer by the time she had to make a choice. “The colleges all wanted housing contracts, orientation registrations, and other deadline-specific tasks,” she said. “It gave me so much anxiety that I considered joining the military if it meant guaranteed aid.”
In the end, Kara, who plans to major in social work and human services, chose a college that she saw as the most affordable option while hoping that she would receive enough aid, but not knowing how much she might have to borrow. When her offer finally arrived, in late July, she saw that it included a Pell Grant and a state scholarship. She didn’t receive the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, for students with exceptional financial need; she said the financial-aid office told her that, by then, all the money had been given out to other applicants.
On move-in day, Kara met several students lacking a permanent home who had yet to receive an aid offer from the college: “They were all anxious and worried they might have to leave if they didn’t get enough aid.”
A day or so after Kara arrived, the college gave her a $5,000 scholarship, “which I am incredibly grateful for,” she said. That lowered the amount she figured she would have to borrow for her first year, to about $3,000.
Still, Kara didn’t know what might have happened if she had chosen a different college. One might have delivered a whopping aid offer, maybe even a full ride. The failure of the federal-aid system had short-circuited many students’ ability to make a fully informed decision, leaving them with a bundle of “What ifs.”
Uncertainty gripped Jessica all summer. When she wasn’t working, she hung out with friends, trained for a half-marathon, and watched episodes of NCIS.
But the wait for federal aid took a toll. “It’s like being on this balance beam,” she said one day in mid-August. “I’m just kind of holding out and holding out, and, like, hoping and praying that this Pell Grant money will come so that I’ll be able to afford school.”
Jessica has been on a payment plan at her college, with $651.88 due every two weeks. On the same day she made a payment in late July, she received her regular paychecks from both her jobs, which totaled $810.63. That left her $158.75 to get through the next two weeks while staying with relatives. At one point, she dipped into her savings to cover some expenses. If she hadn’t had that money and been working two jobs, she said she would’ve had to drop out of college.
I’d like to be able to live a life that’s worth living.
Later, a state scholarship she had received kicked in, lowering her monthly payment. SchoolHouse Connection sent her some money, too. All of that helped a lot, but she worried about the payments due on September 1, September 15, and October 1.
For years, Jessica had been pushing herself away from the past and toward a future she could picture, one in which she could sustain herself fully, without having to rely so much on other people. “I’d like to be able to live a life that’s worth living,” she said.
Jessica hoped to work in environmental science. She had always felt drawn to beaches, marshes, and estuaries, where tides and rivers meet. On a muggy Sunday in August, not long before the first day of classes, she spent some time on the water with her brother, paddle boarding along a canal while he kayaked, passing some turtles basking in the sun.
Three days later, it was time to head back to college. While Jessica was packing up her belongings at the house where she had been staying, a notification popped up on her phone. It was an email from the student accounts office.
She checked her financial-aid portal and saw that a Pell Grant had been applied to her account. Her total amount owed was now $0.
Jessica felt a rush of relief as she stared at the screen. Her financial-aid offer had finally come through — 208 days after she completed the FAFSA.
“Yayyy!” she said.
She finished packing and then drove herself back to college.
