A bumpy rollout of the new and simplified financial aid form means delays in when U.S. colleges and universities receive student’s FAFSA applications and could ultimately lead to students not receiving all their aid on time or long lines in the financial aid departments of colleges.

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Education said through a statement that the delay is the result of a last-minute fix to the application that would connect the new financial aid calculation to the latest inflation data.

Typically, March is when students receive FAFSA award letters from their chosen college or university; they are expected to commit to enrolling at the institution by May. This timeline will now be pushed back since colleges won’t receive applications until March for the 2024-25 academic year.

This delay means colleges will have a shorter and more demanding timeline to asses and distribute financial aid awards, possibly causing them to change their acceptance deadlines.

“On the very day that schools were expecting FAFSA applicant information, they were instead notified by the U.S. Department of Education that they shouldn’t expect to receive that data until March, at the earliest,” Justin Draeger, the president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in a statement Tuesday.

Read more: What to know about student loan debt in 2024

Since a late December soft launch, many students have faced confusion and barriers in accessing the form.

The Department of Education voiced at the start of January that there were “some minor issues” with the form but reassured students that everyone would be able to complete the application.

“You will have plenty of time to complete the FAFSA form. If you do submit your form during the soft launch, your information will be saved and you won’t need to resubmit your form or any related information. If your form is unavailable when you or your family members try to access it, please try again later,” the Department of Education website reads.

The new application is meant to increase access to grants and scholarships by requiring students to provide more data; it will also reduce the eligibility for some families with multiple children in college. While the previous application had 108 questions, the latest form now has 36 and offers a more efficient way of importing financial and tax records.

With the new and simplified FAFSA, more people will be eligible for financial aid, according to the Department of Education. Supporting more students from families with low incomes, awarding close to 610,000 additional students for Pell Grants, a need-based grant for low-income undergraduates, in the 2024-25 academic year.

“With this last-minute news, our nation’s colleges are once again left scrambling as they determine how best to work within these new timelines to issue aid offers as soon as possible — so the students who can least afford higher education aren’t the ones who ultimately pay the price for these missteps,” Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in a statement Tuesday.

Currently, 3.1 million FAFSA forms have been successfully submitted since the new application went live, but many students and families are still experiencing issues. Hiccups like parents without social security numbers working to complete the form and unable to proceed forward without filling in the entry – even though the Department of Education says they should be able to complete the form without a social security number.

While in past years, FAFSA applications were due in October, students have a new deadline to submit the form by June 30 of each year.

“These continued delays, communicated at the last minute, threaten to harm the very students and families that federal student aid is intended to help,” Draeger said in his statement.