Big changes in applying for federal financial aid are coming: Temple official breaks down what it all means.

The U.S. Department of Education is preparing to roll out the biggest changes in the federal financial aid application for college in decades.

Students, parents and financial aid offices are waiting to see what the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, looks like. All indications are that the new forms will reduce the time and stress that it takes to fill out the applications and help 1.5 million more students access the maximum federal Pell grant geared toward lower-income students, bringing the total number of students eligible for the maximum grant to 5.2 million.

But on Wednesday, the Education Department announced that the forms may not be ready until the end of the year, meaning a tighter timeline for filling them out and considering financial aid packages.

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We talked with Emilie Van Trieste, director of student financial services at Temple University, about what all this means for students and their families who assist with college costs.

I have been with Temple for 23 years, in financial aid for 23 years, director of the department for the last six.

That is correct. What happens is typically the FAFSA becomes available for students and families on Oct. 1. But with the ... congressional changes for the FAFSA simplification, they had announced that because of all the significant changes to the application process and formula itself, that we would be experiencing a delay.

It causes challenges because typically our new students and families and new transfer students ... would have the opportunity to file early, because from their perspective, they are looking to compare financial offers and compare costs of institutions. So the earlier, the better in their decision-making process. ... So the smaller, tighter timeline definitely can create a lot of challenges for them.

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That is another significant challenge. Our student information systems, our state grants systems, our institutional awarding processes, these things are all impacted by actually getting the FAFSA data and applications from the Department of Education. Typically, it’s only a couple of days’ delay. So hearing that it opens Dec. 31 and it could be a full month before we could actually see that data is going to present challenges for us.

We need to get familiar with that new formula and see how the changes have really impacted students’ need at our institution. And then we need to be able to prepare financial aid offers. ... We’re looking at now perhaps a three- to four-week delay.

That’s going to tighten the timeline for our students and families who are making those determinations between institutions. So again, typically, they would have the ability to file a FAFSA Oct. 1 and begin to get financial aid offers in the January/February time period. But now, this is going to push us all back because we won’t have the data until the end of January.

So the amount of outreach and support for our new students and parents really needs to be the focus. We do evening webinars for our students. We do workshops. We will do FAFSA filing-in-person events, all through the month of January for our students, which is typical. But this year, we’ll really be focused on involving our new students and families so that we can help them through this process.

Absolutely. Anyone who doesn’t have familiarity with filing the FAFSA or the college decision processes is going to be a little bit at a disadvantage.

To that we would say lean in to your financial aid offices. Lean into experts who are here to shepherd you through the changes so that it doesn’t become too difficult.

At our fall preview days, our events that span September, October and into November, we have been hearing questions. I think folks don’t know what they don’t know about the changes. So they are hearing there are big changes. They are wondering how does this impact me.

The good news is that the changes are simplifying FAFSA. They are significantly reducing the number of questions. As a student and parent, you don’t have to answer questions that aren’t relevant to your own situation, so the application itself is so much better. It visually looks so much better. There’s a wonderful time clock so you have a sense of how long it will be until you complete the application. Now, just knowing you only have approximately 10 more minutes encourages a student and family to complete the application.

The terminology changes are fantastic. That’s going to help our lower-income and first-generation students have a better understanding of what they are being asked so that they can better answer the questions, faster.

It’s going to be expanding eligibility for our lower-income students.

There are wonderful how-to-do videos. When you have a question, for instance, a student may ask which parent (should they list). If they have parents who are not married or divorced or separated, that can be a big question. There are wonderful videos and tutorials that help to illustrate that for students, to make it easier to understand.

Another big change is the IRS (tax) data retrieval. Right now, what happens with FAFSA, there is the IRS data retrieval that a student and family can use. But that is being replaced with a much more secure and direct link. ... What that’s going to do is help transfer a student and family’s tax information in a more secure and efficient way to that FAFSA application.

Right now what we’ve been pushing is that communication piece. We’ve been encouraging our students and families, both new and current, to sign up for the text messaging alerts coming out of the Department of Education because that’s who is going to tell us when this application goes live. If you are a new student or new parent completing it, you need to have your FSA ID set up. So you can do that now.

I would just say that I really think students and families should lean in to their financial aid offices. We have been following this for over a year, we have been attending numerous webinars and reading up on all of the resources available. So we really can help guide students and families through the process. Now is the time to reach out to us.