Indiana will not push back the April 15 priority deadline to apply for financial aid, despite widespread issues and delays with the financial aid process, the state’s Commission for Higher Education announced Monday.
Students who file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid by April 15 will be automatically considered for state financial aid, such as the Frank O’Bannon grant. After the deadline passes, students will be awarded aid on a first-come, first-serve basis. In past years, aid has been awarded into the summer months. The commission still is encouraging students to file, even if it’s late.
The rollout of the so-called “better FAFSA” has been plagued with problems, despite the fact that the federal government’s revamp of the forms was supposed to streamline the process.
FAFSA opened at the end of December, which is two months later than parents and students had become accustomed to. When the form became available, FAFSA sometimes glitched and crashed when students and parents tried to access it. And, for more than two months, parents without Social Security numbers were blocked from accessing the form altogether. That put some students from immigrant families even further behind their peers.
All these issues have caused FAFSA applications to plummet across the U.S. and in Indiana. That’s a problem for the state, which had aimed to increase college enrollment this year with a new law requiring high school seniors to complete FAFSA by April 15 or opt out.
As of April 5, only 28% of Indiana’s high school seniors had filled out the form, a decrease of 28% from the previous academic year, according to the National College Attainment Network. Nationally, applications are down 38% from last year.
There’s precedent for extending the deadline.
For the last two years, the state has pushed it back — in 2023 to accommodate students from counties under disaster emergency declaration because of tornadoes, and in 2022 because April 15 was a state holiday. Several Indiana schools, including the University of Indianapolis, Purdue University and Indiana University, also pushed back their enrollment deadlines to account for FAFSA discord.
However, there are still options if you miss the Indiana priority deadline. You should still file the FAFSA as soon as possible, because you could still be eligible for federal financial aid, such as Pell Grants. The federal government allows FAFSA applications through June 30, 2025.
A correction was made on Feb. 27, 2025: A previous version of this article mischaracterized the nature of the FAFSA requirement.
Claire Rafford covers higher education for Mirror Indy in partnership with Open Campus.
Got a higher ed story? Contact reporter Claire Rafford at claire.rafford@mirrorindy.org or on social media @clairerafford.
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