Students encounter FAFSA filing issues as state extends priority deadline

FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) -- California students have been given more time to apply for college financial aid.

The clock is ticking for high school seniors and college students to apply for college financial aid.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA as it's more commonly known, allows students to be considered for federal, state, and school-based financial support for college.

Filling out the form is a family affair.

Parents, and if the student is married, their spouse, will need to provide their financial details too.

"We do have students that have told us they've done the application in 10, 15 minutes," said Mikki Johnson, director of financial aid for Fresno City College.

"There are certain groups that have experienced the most challenges and those are our students who are either U.S. citizens, or eligible non-citizens, but their parents or their spouses are undocumented."

The process can be intimidating.

That's why Visalia Unified hosted several workshops, but they were met with problems.

"Both our staff and students have encountered technical issues with the FAFSA website, which began after its relaunch last year. These include website outages, although it is common for the website to go down more often as the deadline approaches," the district told Action News.

Other schools in the Valley have encountered similar experiences.

"There were many errors as well as processing issues where we weren't even getting applications last year," said Johnson.

"The Office of Federal Student Aid is not tracking any outage or major issues with the 2025-26 FAFSA form," said a representative with the California Department of Education.

The department adds that as of this week, more than 7.3 million forms have been submitted and processed.

The deadline to apply varies from state to state.

On Tuesday, it was announced California's deadline would be pushed back one month to April 2nd.

Everyone is encouraged to complete the form as early as possible as some colleges have earlier deadlines.

"If you do the FAFSA, you would still be considered for federal aid, you just would miss the opportunity that year," said Johnson.

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