Stuck in Limbo

On a Monday morning in April, the young women pressed themselves against the walls of a hallway spanning the length of their school. Here at the Brooklyn Emerging Leaders Academy, an all-girls school known as BELA, each day begins with students forming a “sisterhood circle” that’s really a two-row line. The cherished tradition gives the 250 teenagers here a moment to pause, listen, and stand together as one.

Some students fidgeted as teachers in the middle of the hall made announcements — about cheer tryouts, the volleyball team, and the upcoming SAT. And then came a reminder: Everyone would go outside around 3:20 p.m. to watch the solar eclipse. “Unless you have your special glasses,” one teacher said over the rising chatter, “you are not going to look up into the sky!”

Afterward, Taylor Browne-Fandal walked upstairs to her English class, an International Baccalaureate, or IB, course. The aspiring lawyer, who wore a sparkling necklace bearing her name, had stellar grades and acceptances from several selective colleges. But she had fallen in love with just one: Spelman College. The historically Black women’s institution, in Atlanta, has a tradition of sisterhood that reminded her of BELA’s. She believed she would thrive there and find the campus nurturing.

But Browne-Fandal had recently received some upsetting news relating to the catastrophic rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. An April 3 email from Spelman explained that the college was unable to complete the evaluation of applicants for its highly competitive Bonner Scholar Program “due to the ongoing delays with the release of accurate FAFSA information by the U.S. Department of Education.”

Browne-Fandal had applied last winter for the scholarship, which is given to students who demonstrate a commitment to service, among other factors; the selection process includes an assessment of an applicant’s financial need, as determined by the FAFSA. Students who enroll at Spelman, the email said, could apply for the Bonner program at a later date, but no scholarships would be given for the fall: “We understand that this revised timeline may be disappointing, but please know that it is imperative for us to uphold the integrity of our review process.” This was evidence that FAFSA issues were not just delaying aid offers but also limiting the scholarships students could receive this fall.

So, after leaving her English class on the morning of the eclipse, Browne-Fandal carried a head full of worries into Room 303. Inside, Cassie Magesis, BELA’s dean of postsecondary success, was taking stock of the turmoil. Eight days into April, the college counselor knew that most of the school’s 57 seniors had yet to receive a single financial-aid offer from the four-year colleges they were considering. This was an especially troublesome situation at BELA, where four-fifths of all students come from families below the poverty line; nearly all are Black.

Though the FAFSA Fiasco of 2024 has affected everyone with a stake in the federal-aid process, low-income and underrepresented minority students have felt its effects most deeply. A long string of bureaucratic and technical screwups continues to strand the nation’s most vulnerable applicants in limbo, complicating — and threatening to unravel — the already-grueling search for an affordable college.

BELA’s students didn’t know the ins and outs of the U.S. Department of Education’s failure to deliver processed FAFSAs to colleges on time, or how numerous delays have fouled up financial-aid offices’ elaborate operations, or how numerous documented errors have affected approximately 40 percent of the data files that colleges have received, preventing them from calculating aid offers for hordes of applicants. Students here just knew that they still didn’t have the information they needed to chart their future.

The uncertainty has intensified all the usual challenges marginalized students face — and delivered brand-new ones. Each spring, Magesis follows a meticulous plan for guiding students and their parents through the last stage of the admissions process, leading them through a thicket of often-confusing financial-aid offers, and empowering them to make a sound decision.

But the FAFSA fiasco was ripping that plan to shreds.

Everything was upside down. Normally, Magesis, known at BELA as Miss Cassie, would be immersed in the second round of “commitment meetings” a week or so into April. During those one-on-one chats, she pores over financial-aid offers with each senior, helping them make decisions before the May 1 deposit deadline that many selective colleges have long held as a sacred date.

But this spring, with hardly any financial-aid offers on hand, those meetings were a mix of check-ins, pep talks, and full-on venting sessions. Everyone was fed up.

At 9:30 a.m., Magesis sat down across from Anyla Quow, who wore chunky headphones around her neck. She looked distraught as she bent back the arms of the Gumby figurine that the counselor keeps on her desk. Conversations about paying for college can spark many emotions, so Magesis gives students things to fidget with.

Quow was among the few who had received any financial-aid offers. The one she had was from nearby Molloy University, her top choice. But the offer said she would have to pay about $18,000 a year, far more than she and her mother could ever afford. It devastated her.

So Quow pinned her hopes on Mercy University, which had accepted her into its nursing program. The institution has two campuses in New York City, and she wanted to stay close to home to be near her mother.

But she still didn’t know exactly how much it would cost. The long wait to find out had drained her, and time was of the essence. An email she received from the institution in early March said that the program is “extremely competitive … with a limited number of available seats.” To secure a spot, the message said, “you must submit your enrollment deposit in your application portal.” That $100 deposit, refundable until June 1, would enable a student “to get first pick at scheduling your fall classes as soon as registration opens this month!” After the program reached capacity, though, students submitting a deposit would be waitlisted.

For some families, $100 is nothing; for hers, it’s a lot. Her mother was scrambling to come up with the money.

Magesis understood why Quow wanted this to happen. But she worried about the lesson that depositing without knowing the costs would impart: You don’t rent an apartment or buy a car without knowing all the terms.

“I want you to go where you want to go,” Magesis told Quow. “But I’m really hesitant, big time, to have you commit without knowing what your aid package is.”

“I knowww,” Quow said wearily. “I just feel like this is my only choice, because it’s the closest.”

“I do want us not to throw Lehigh off the table,” Magesis said of Lehigh University, in Pennsylvania. “If Lehigh comes back with an offer that’s significantly more affordable than Mercy, might that help a little bit?”

“I really just want to jump right into nursing,” Quow said. “I don’t want to go through four years in a major that I don’t want to do. That’s gonna make me lose motivation. I want to get into the clinicals, the fun stuff.”

“That is the fun stuff,” Magesis said. “Are you OK if I give your mom a call this evening to chat with her? Because I want to make sure that she’s fully aware of, like, the limitations of us not knowing the package.”

Quow said it was OK. Then she started sobbing.

“I feel like everything is going down.”

Magesis handed her a paper towel.

“You feel like what’s going down?”

“Like, I can’t even go to the college that I actually want to go to.”

Magesis leaned in closer, catching Quow’s eyes.

“You have worked so freakin’ hard. Look at all the acceptances you’ve gotten. These delays and the lack of aid packages, that’s nothing that you did. I know we’ve talked about how the in-between time is hard for you, right? But we’re gonna figure it out together.”

Magesis offered to call Mercy, to see if the nursing program would hold her spot. In her experience, the university was committed to college access, over the years, but she couldn’t be sure exactly what an offer might look like. She and Quow agreed that they would not rule out Lehigh just yet. Still, Quow said she wanted her mother to submit the deposit.

“That’s just one thing less for me to worry about.”

Magesis understood. The FAFSA chaos had left Quow, like many worn-out students, feeling powerless. To send a deposit was to exercise some control over their fate.

Exhaustion was short-circuiting conversations about affordability. The key question — how much will this college actually cost? — can often seem inscrutable for students, especially those whose parents didn’t attend college.

Many students had received aid estimates from some, but not all, of the colleges on their lists. Some had used colleges’ online net-price calculators, which though sometimes helpful, aren’t necessarily reliable or precise. Some ask for a range of family income instead of a specific number. Others still use terminology from the previous FAFSA. “I don’t put a ton of faith in anything,” Magesis said, “until I have a real aid package in hand.”

Each year, after those offers pour in, Magesis sees families reach the heartbreaking conclusion that a particular college isn’t remotely affordable. But, just as important, they typically get official confirmation that one or more other colleges are affordable. Based on her years of experience, Magesis had reason to believe that Lehigh would send Quow a “bomb” aid offer — a really good one — but the teenager didn’t know it yet.

“The aid offers ground us in reality,” Magesis said. “But I’m not able to have those kinds of conversations right now.”

The scarcity of aid offers so far has made it more difficult to contend with some families’ wishful thinking. During one recent meeting with a family, she asked them to enter their financial information into one private college’s net-price calculator, which spat out an estimate of what they would have to contribute: $43,000 a year, nearly triple the single parent’s annual income. Nonetheless, the parent said that they believed the financial-aid offer would be much more generous than what the estimate showed. “It’s hard,” Magesis said, “because I know that the real package isn’t going to be better. But I totally get why a family would not want to cross a school off their list until they see it.”

Meanwhile, the same dynamic is shaping some students’ thinking about where to enroll. Magesis has been encouraging many students to visit colleges that accepted them — those that she knows will be relatively affordable. But some worn-out seniors have told her they’re not interested, because they’ve got their hearts set on institutions that, in many cases, she suspects won’t deliver nearly enough financial aid. “But I don’t have the data from colleges,” she said, “to help make that real.”

When all those aid offers finally reach families, how much time will they have to digest them? Not much, in many cases. The calendar leaves little room for in-depth discussions. Magesis had two more weeks to huddle with seniors before spring break. And on the week students returned to BELA, seniors would take their IB exams, an exhausting process during which they wouldn’t be available for college-advising chats during the school day.

Then there’s May 1. Though hundreds of colleges had pushed back their deposit deadlines — to May 15 or June 1 — some prominent institutions had not done so as of early April. “It makes me question their commitment to access,” Magesis said. “My kids are feeling a real sense of panic.”

Some colleges have told counselors that though they’re not adjusting deadlines, they will work with families who need more time due to FAFSA issues. “That’s not going to even register for my students, who are looking on the college’s website for the deadline,” Magesis said. “They’re not seeing, in clear language, ‘But follow up with us.’ So it’s not a message that is fully heard by the community that needs it the most — low-income students, the first in their families to go to college, for whom financial aid is so important.”

Magesis had 57 students to advise, a small fraction of the caseloads many high-school counselors must manage. But each in-depth conversation about aid offers is complex in its own way, not to mention time-consuming. All spring, she had worried about how she would fit all those crucial conversations into an ever-compressing timeline. The calamitous rollout of the new FAFSA had delayed the federal-aid process by more than six months. But even the most dedicated counselor couldn’t add more weeks to the school year, or more hours to the day.

All morning, seniors poured into Room 303. Some had appointments; others came on their own. Many wore worried expressions, yet most looked determined, too.

At 10:46 a.m., eight young women were gathered around two tables. The FAFSA saga had inspired running jokes and bursts of sarcasm among them. When would everyone get their all aid offers? “The solar eclipse will make it happen!” one student said. “FAFSA is going to give me $2.63 to pay for college,” said another. One student who ambled in wondered aloud if joining the military would be her only affordable route to college. “Ohhhh god, they’re gonna ship my ass off to war!” she said, placing her hand on her forehead with theatrical flair.

Browne-Fandal, the student who had set her sights on Spelman, looked up from her laptop and slapped her hands on the table. “When is FAFSA gonna do their job?!”

The senior had pulled up Spelman’s net-price calculator and entered her mother’s financial information. After seeing the resulting estimate, she placed her head down on the table. “Oh … my … god,” she said, looking up, “this is stressssing me!”

Magesis walked over and peered at the screen. Browne-Fandal’s estimated net price: $42,782 a year.

“I’m worried,” the counselor said, “about what percentage of your mom’s income that is.”

Browne-Fandal’s mother is a parole officer, who, as her daughter describes it, makes a decent salary. But a salary that someone might call middle-income in much of the country doesn’t go that far in New York City, especially for a single parent with a dependent child.

That’s why Browne-Fandal had been ecstatic when she learned about Spelman’s Bonner Scholar Program, through which selected students commit to 10 hours of community service per week, plus two summers of service; in return, they get a support network and “financial assistance commensurate to student need.” Each year, more than 200 students apply for just 20 slots, according to Spelman. So it was far from a sure thing.

Still, given the many hours Browne-Fandal had spent serving her school and community, such as mentoring younger students, she thought she had a good shot. The scholarship might have knocked several thousand dollars off her net price, and that money, she said, “would’ve helped to lift some of the weight that my family has to pay.”

Just a few days earlier, when Browne-Fandal learned that Spelman had temporarily suspended the scholarship, she had felt angry — not with the college, but with the federal government. When she came to tell Magesis, saying that she wasn’t sure she could still attend Spelman, the counselor had felt angry, too. “I could see the light just kind of leaving her eyes,” Magesis said later. She assured the young woman that they would reach out to Spelman and see what, if anything, they could do.

Browne-Fandal had since shaken off her disappointment and completed four more applications for private scholarships. As she scrolled through Spelman’s net-price calculator, she frowned and cocked her head: “Wait, this is saying that I can only take out, wait, hold on —”

“$5,500,” Magesis said.

Dependent students can receive up to $5,500 in federal loans for their first year of college (except those whose parents aren’t able to secure parent PLUS loans).

“If I don’t qualify for more aid,” Browne-Fandal said, turning to look up at her counselor, “how can they say I can’t take out any more money than that?”

Magesis nodded empathetically.

“This is what we talked about, right? How loan debt has to be manageable?” she said. “Because we know law school is what you’re interested in. Wherever you commit, you have to think beyond those four years.”

But it often wasn’t easy to think four years down the line. Not for teenagers who’d long been pushing toward college, hoping to find a campus that would feel like home.

Early on, Browne-Fandal planned to apply only to predominantly white institutions. But a conversation with her mother — who graduated from Virginia State University, a historically black college — changed her thinking. “She was like, ‘Wouldn’t you rather be somewhere where you feel comfortable, and where you know that the professors look like you, and want you to succeed?’” Growing up, she had always liked the warm feeling she got when attending homecoming and alumni events with her mother. The more she considered her mother’s advice, the more she felt drawn to HBCUs.

Then Browne-Fandal visited Spelman for the first time. “It felt like a safe space to be in,” she said. She decided that the college would empower her and help her flourish just as Virginia State had helped her mother.

Magesis understood Browne-Fandal’s thinking — and respected it. Still, she had encouraged her to keep her options open before settling on Spelman. It was nothing against the college, which the counselor admires and BELA students revere. BELA graduates currently attend 11 HBCUs across eight states, as a display in one hallway proclaims. But HBCUs tend to lack the institutional resources to provide substantial aid to most students. And Magesis often worries about the staggering debt many families incur at whichever college students attend.

Regardless of where they enroll, debt is a worry for many Black women. Though Black students make up only about 14 percent of the college-age population, they take on 25 percent of all federal student loans, according to a recent report by the Education Trust. And Black women leave college with more debt than any other group. A year after earning a bachelor’s degree, Black women owe an average of $38,800 in federal undergraduate loans. Black women borrowers who attended graduate school hold an average of $58,252 in graduate loans.

Browne-Fandal said her mother had assured her that she could pay for it all, likely with help from extended family, as well as parent PLUS loans. She deeply appreciated it.

But $42,782.

“Uhhhh,” Browne-Fandal said, looking up at the ceiling. “That’s like $200,000 total.”

“Again,” Magesis said. “It’ll fall on mom.”

“Ohhh,” Browne-Fandal said. “She’s gonna have to pay that back for life.”

But the young woman had no offers in hand, no official documents to read, nothing at all to compare. She felt like she was suspended in time, tiptoeing toward college.

“It feels like walking on eggshells every day,” Browne-Fandal said. “It’s the unknown — there are no answers. It’s almost time to leave high school, and it’s like, what am I gonna be doing for the next four years?”

BELA, home of the Bees, melds a rigorous college-preparatory curriculum with intensive social and emotional support. Evidence of its holistic approach to education is everywhere. In one hallway, the walls are covered with “dopamine menus,” lists of activities students create to help them stay motivated throughout the day (“Reading a new book”; “Taking care of my guinea pigs”) while minimizing distractions, such as social media and Netflix. Those having a rough day can visit “the thinkery,” a room with cozy beanbag chairs, to decompress. And they can swing by the “cutie closet,” stocked with donated beauty supplies, soap, tampons, and deodorant.

But financial-aid delays have piled one more layer of complexity on top of challenges that many low-income families here confront each day. Housing insecurity often disrupts students’ lives at BELA. Some have long commutes to the school. Many work part-time jobs, to help cover their own expenses, as well as to supplement their family’s income. Some struggle with mental-health challenges. And some know what it’s like to plow through homework assignments on an empty stomach.

The FAFSA saga has hit schools like this one especially hard — schools in which many existing challenges can extinguish a prospective student’s hopes for college. Magesis has seen the frustration on teenagers’ faces as they’ve tried again and again to make updates and corrections to their FAFSA, only to get the same message each time: “We expect that online corrections will be available in the coming weeks …” By April, a couple applicants could recite the full text from memory.

“The system has been telling them to wait, to be patient,” Magesis said, “even though the system has been doing nothing to prove itself. And then, of course, if enough people tell you no, and to just keep waiting, you might start thinking college is not for you.”

Magesis has talked with students who’ve said they’re burned out and ready to bail on college. “Those are challenging conversations to have with our most motivated students,” she said. “But for those who are struggling to complete tasks, it gives them a really big reason to say, ‘OK, I don’t have to try, I’m not getting a package.’”

Let’s not forget what a financial-aid offer is. Yes, it’s an official document full of numbers and sums, an agreement governing the exchange of federal and institutional funds, and, often, a tedious, jargony mess. But especially in low-income communities, an aid offer — a sufficient one, at least — is much more than that: It’s a ticket enabling passage from one place to another, from a student’s familiar life to the new life she imagines.

Talia Favourite, a senior at BELA, applied through early-decision to the University of Rochester and was accepted. The institution, which uses the CSS Profile, a financial-aid application that’s much more detailed than the FAFSA, sent her an offer that included substantial institutional aid, plus an estimate of her federal aid (the exact amount would be determined after Rochester received her processed federal-aid form). Unlike most of her classmates, she knows just about how much aid she will receive — and it’s pretty close to a full ride.

When the U.S. Supreme Court last summer banned the consideration of an applicant’s race in admissions, it left the door open for colleges to consider what students choose to share in their essays about their racial identity and experiences. Favourite leaned into the opportunity to describe her life in central Brooklyn. The personal statement she wrote for the Common Application offers a reminder of what’s really at stake in the financial-aid process.

In her essay, Favourite describes how she became aware of death at an early age while growing up in central Brooklyn: “Being from a neighborhood where I have attended more funerals than graduations, coming from a place where eighteen is a blessing and twenty-one is a miracle, you’re constantly grieving, whether you like it or not, grieving the friends you’ve seen in caskets, grieving the friends you’ve seen with the guns and the gangs, grieving your old way of thinking, and most of all grieving your ability to dream. Losing the ability to dream can leave you in a place of deep sadness, heightened anxiety, and curiosity.”

Favourite then explains how she overcame “survivor’s guilt,” finding strength and purpose, a commitment to serve her community, and an aspiration for “greatness.”

Many low-income applicants share a similar aspiration. But until a financial-aid offer arrives, an aspiration is just a dream yet to take flight.

Anger. Hope. Frustration. Doubt. Excitement tinged with apprehension. You could feel it all inside Room 303.

Early in the afternoon, Magesis sat with a young woman who was down about her lack of aid offers and the projected cost of her top-choice college. She was staring into space and fidgeting with the Gumby figurine.

“Do you know this guy’s name?” Magesis asked.

“The green guy?”

“Yeah.”

The student shrugged. “FAFSA,” she said.

Magesis laughed. The young woman managed a smile.

Students at BELA trust the counselor, a straight-talker who beams enthusiasm at everyone swarming around her, who laughs with them even while nudging them. Sometimes they pick up her cellphone off her desk when she’s not looking and take selfies for her to find later. That day, a young woman borrowed one of the counselor’s purple pens and wrote “Ms. Cassie” on a Post-it note, adding six hearts and filling in each one.

Some students who sat down at her desk were in especially complicated situations. Like Brianna Grant, who had a stuffed animal — a frog named Jacquise — peeking out from her collar.

The aspiring animal-science major was hoping to attend the State University of New York’s College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskill, about a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Brooklyn. She had been admitted to the university’s Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), which provides academic, social, and financial support for promising in-state applicants who otherwise might not have been admitted.

Grant’s mother, though, who was concerned about the cost, apparently wanted her to start at a local two-year college, save some money, and then transfer to Cobleskill. But if Grant were to do that, Magesis explained, she couldn’t take advantage of the EOP program, which is open only to students who enter it in their first year of college. That would make her years at Cobleskill more expensive than they otherwise would’ve been.

Magesis called the student’s mother to discuss a plan for getting Grant up to the campus for a visit, while wishing she had a financial-aid offer from Cobleskill in hand. Without it, she couldn’t have a brass-tacks chat.

Grant’s predicament was a reminder: FAFSA delays are pushing back delicate discussions for low-income families, who often must confront difficult trade-offs on the cusp of college. As Magesis understood it, Grant’s mother wanted her daughter to get a summer job and earn some money. But the EOP program would require her to attend a monthlong orientation session at Cobleskill, which would limit what she could earn.

Something, it seemed, would have to give.

“How are you feeling?” Magesis asked. “Stressed?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, this in-between stage is not the funnest.”

“If this all would’ve worked out a lot quicker, I would feel a lot better.”

Just before 1 p.m., near the end of BELA’s lunch period, 18 young women filled the counselor’s office. Some ate plates of pasta and gabbed. Others sat silently.

A young woman who had been on hold with a college’s financial-aid office for half an hour finally gave up.

“Miss Cassie, I hate this,” she said. “The worst thing is they don’t even answer the phone.”

Another student loudly shut her laptop.

“I’m becoming a flight attendant — I’m done!”

Juggling multiple conversations, Magesis walked some students through net-price calculators on a half-dozen college websites, talked with an anxious parent on the phone, and helped a young woman revise an “interest letter” she would soon submit in hopes of getting off one college’s waitlist.

Then Moalene Jean-Francois walked in for the second time that day. The young woman wore a black puffy coat and looked forlorn. The aspiring actress had hoped to study theater in California but hadn’t been accepted at the colleges where she’d applied. And Ithaca College’s net-price calculator had delivered discouraging news.

Magesis knew the long wait for aid offers had wrung her out. The weight of uncertainty was hitting her hard.

“How are you feeling right now?” Magesis asked.

“Fine,” Jean-Francois whispered.

“Because your body language is telling me something different.”

Jean-Francois, who had pulled her hood up, swiveled back and forth in her chair, tugging at a piece of green ribbon. Then she left the room.

A while later, Jean-Francois returned. She handed Magesis a sheet of paper on which she had listed her postsecondary options. It included two- and four-year colleges, as well as a list of “Don’ts”:

“Don’t want to stay in NYC.”

“Don’t want to be close to home.”

“Don’t want to be in debt.”

In the top-right corner, she had written “It’s going to be okay, don’t stress about it,” which she had then crossed out. Over on the left: “Gap year?”

Jean-Francois told Magesis that she was considering not enrolling in any college this fall.

Magesis leaned closer, searching her face. She believed that, based on the young woman’s grades and financial need, she would receive aid offers that would make college affordable. They just hadn’t come yet.

“Today has been, like, really emotionally charged,” the counselor said. “So I don’t want us to commit to any decision right now when you’re feeling this way. I want us to think through all of the options, and that includes a gap year. Let’s explore whatever you want to explore. You’ve worked so hard in high school. You are going to have options that might get you where you want to go. If you decide ‘OK, I want to transfer to California,’ and that is still the dream, then we can figure that out.”

Jean-Francois nodded. Magesis got her to laugh a bit. They discussed the possibility of SUNY’s Geneseo campus, which the counselor thought might be a good option for her.

“You want to be an actor, and that is a hard life,” Magesis said. “We have to make sure you can afford it. You can’t be going to all these auditions if you’re worried about all these student-loan payments.”

Jean-Francois sighed. “We can just negotiate” with colleges, she said.

“We are gonna negotiate, but we need your actual aid packages to be able to negotiate.”

Before getting up to leave, Jean-Francois wrote four words on a piece of paper and attached it to her coat. “Debt Never Killed Anybody,” it said.

The federal-aid process was still stuck, but the school year was rolling right along. In Room 303, students chatted about senior superlatives and showed each other baby pictures they intended to submit for the yearbook. They talked about prom, the color of the dresses they planned to wear. They traded lip gloss and scrolled through Instagram. For a while, they filled the room with laughter.

At BELA, teenagers were on the verge of many rites of passage. But some rituals were on hold. Magesis knew that many of her students had been watching recent TikTok videos in which high-school seniors celebrated their commitments to college; most of her students couldn’t do that yet if they wanted to. Each spring, the counselor assembles a poster displaying each student’s name beside the name of the college she’ll be attending. Still not possible.

And each spring BELA holds a commitment celebration, during which every senior receives a sweatshirt bearing the name of their chosen college. The event is meant, in part, to inspire juniors, who help with organizing it. But Magesis hadn’t ordered any sweatshirts yet. Then there’s the “college shower,” when seniors receive donated goods — bedding, comforters, towels, backpacks.

This year’s seniors, though, didn’t seem nearly as pumped for those events, Magesis had noticed. A season that’s usually celebratory just felt tense.

Three days earlier, a 4.8-magnitude earthquake had shaken the city during the school day, frightening everyone at BELA. Now, the teenagers were about to witness a solar eclipse.

Just before 3 p.m., a handful of young women huddled in the corner of the room, passing a pair of special glasses back and forth, and then looking up at the sky. The moon was gnawing at the edge of the sun.

A few minutes later, Magesis and a few teachers helped lead all the students out to the parking lot next to the playground. As the moon crossed the sun, the air turned cool. Wearing eclipse glasses that the school had provided, some teenagers stared up in silence. Others whooped.

“Y’all, stop, stop! Look!”

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

“It looks red!”

“I wanna go to space!”

It took a rare astronomical event to help everyone forget, just for a few minutes, about the FAFSA.

After the sun and moon went their separate ways, BELA’s school day officially ended, bringing 57 seniors one step closer to graduation. To college decisions that would likely mold their lives in various ways. To a future that, for most of them, remained frustratingly obscure.

What would it cost to attend College X versus College Y? What might be the long-term consequences of each option? How much loan debt was too much?

Magesis still couldn’t help most of the young women here fully answer those crucial questions, or say when all their financial-aid offers would finally arrive. But as she watched students trickling onto the sidewalk of Lafayette Avenue, she could feel the days slipping away.

Still, Magesis wasn’t giving up or slowing down. That evening she spoke by phone with two parents of seniors, who asked her many questions about affordability and how financial-aid appeals work. She planned to meet one-on-one with 10-15 more seniors the next day. She would keep supporting them and nudging them, laughing at their clever remarks and listening to their concerns — anything to preserve the light in their eyes.

That night, Browne-Fandal did some cleaning and chilled out for a while. She refused to let worry overtake her. For weeks she had been trying not to say too much about the financial-aid delays, because talking about it just added to her anxiety. “We all know that stress is in the air,” she said. “We can all feel it. Like, it’s there.” So she slid on her big headphones and played her favorite music — Drake, Don Toliver, PartyNextDoor. The songs always eased her worries.

Two days later, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing on the FAFSA fiasco, during which four national experts testified, including the head of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, who delivered a blistering condemnation of the flawed rollout, saying “We are in an awful place today.” The vice provost for enrollment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said, “We are facing a crisis of enrollment and of trust.” Legislators on both sides of the aisle slammed the Education Department.

As the thunder of outrage echoed in Washington, D.C., the men and women devoted to college-access work throughout the country continued pushing on, doing what they could to help the students in their care. After contacting Mercy University’s vice president for admissions on behalf of Anyla Quow, the aspiring nurse, Magesis received some good news: The university would hold the student’s spot until she received her financial-aid offer — no deposit necessary. It was a reminder that a counselor taking one extra step, an administrator making one exception, could help a student in need.

After another week ended, Magesis worried about what she so often worried about. Her students making college decisions they would later regret. Saddling themselves with debt that would weigh them down as they tried to build their lives. Even giving up on college altogether. The FAFSA fiasco, she believed, had made each of those scenarios more likely.

Browne-Fandal had snapped a few pictures of the eclipse with her phone. Someday, maybe she would look at those images and recall the spring of 2024, a season of spectacular natural events and long, agonizing delays. A spring when the federal government failed the nation’s most vulnerable students, some institutions clung to their deposit deadlines, and the one college she loved suspended the scholarship she had hoped to receive.

There’s a saying at her school: “Once a BELA Bee, always a BELA Bee.” Wherever the members of the class of 2024 ended up, they would share a bond. The bond of sisterhood formed in a small, nurturing school. The bond of having built belief in themselves, and in each other. And the bond of having endured the FAFSA crisis, which made the end of high school so fraught.

Someday, they could add up what it all had cost.