How one high school is helping students deal with the botched FAFSA rollout

At Robert M. La Follette High School in Madison, Wisconsin, some college-bound seniors are still scrambling to submit their federal financial aid forms – but it’s not for lack of trying.

At Robert M. La Follette High School in Madison, Wisconsin, some college-bound seniors are still scrambling to submit their federal financial aid forms – but it’s not for lack of trying. One student and his father, for example, spent more than three hours sitting with a high school counselor in early May trying to submit the FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. But no matter what they tried, they couldn’t find a way around a technical glitch. And it wasn’t the student’s first attempt. He sat with a high school counselor several times since January to try to submit the FAFSA. “You just feel terrible,” said Vanessa Hlavacka, a counselor for multilingual students at La Follette High School. “It was the dad’s only day off, and he spent it in my office trying to figure this out,” she said. A botched rollout of an updated version of the FAFSA – which must be submitted if a student wants to qualify for certain loans, grants and scholarships – has resulted in multiple problems and delays this year. Submissions across the country are way down, and many students are stuck in limbo, waiting for financial aid information from schools even after the traditional May 1 college decision deadline has come and gone.