0:01

The college application process was

0:03

supposed to get easier. That's

0:05

because last year, the U.S. Department of Education announced

0:09

changes to the Free Application

0:11

for Federal Student Aid, or

0:13

FAFSA. Hi, hello. My name

0:15

is Vanessa Cordova-Ramirez, and I'm

0:18

a Mexican first-generation student,

0:20

hopefully attending college in the

0:22

fall. The new formulas

0:24

used to calculate how much money students

0:26

would get meant more federal money for

0:29

low-income families and children of immigrants, like

0:31

Cordova-Ramirez. Well, I am interested

0:33

in St. Joseph's University and Manhattan College. Those

0:36

are my tops who may

0:38

be St. John's, so I'm thinking about

0:40

it. Cordova-Ramirez lives in Queens, New York,

0:42

and wants to become a radiology technician.

0:45

She works two jobs and helps out a lot

0:47

around the house. She wants to stay

0:49

in New York for school to continue to help

0:51

out her family and be close to her younger

0:53

brother. So location is her

0:55

top priority when choosing a college. The

0:58

second is, of course, cost. But

1:01

when Cordova-Ramirez and her mom sat down

1:03

to fill out the FAFSA earlier this

1:06

year, their application didn't go through, just

1:08

like many others with parents who do not

1:11

have a social security number. Hi,

1:13

Vanessa. NPR producer Janet Oujong

1:15

Lee went to visit Cordova-Ramirez

1:18

and her school counselor, Kristen Azer, at

1:20

Williamsburg Preparatory High School, and they tried

1:22

again to fill out the form earlier

1:25

this year. There's a box to check

1:27

below that says I do not

1:29

have a social security, so for somebody undocumented,

1:31

when you click it, it'll gray

1:33

out the box and you hit

1:35

through Continue. Cordova-Ramirez comes from a

1:37

mixed status family. Even though

1:40

she is a U.S. citizen, her mom is

1:42

not. I've gotten to the second step, creating

1:44

a user name. We've made

1:46

it to the third step, and now this is

1:48

a dress. It does make

1:50

you feel like it's possible, and

1:53

then the error pops up for

1:55

more help creating your account call.

8:00

they really don't have the means to

8:02

afford going to college X. Well

8:04

then, they can't enroll, and

8:07

that's an empty seat on a

8:09

college campus. And most colleges do

8:12

not have the resources to fill

8:14

the missing federal aid that so many

8:17

students have right now with an incomplete

8:19

FAFSA. So... So those empty seats are

8:21

lost revenue. And an empty

8:23

seat is a lost revenue, an empty bed,

8:25

or an empty, you know, a

8:28

quad that has fewer students in it

8:30

is also a bottom line that looks

8:33

less healthy than it might

8:35

otherwise. What are you hearing from the

8:37

colleges and university officials you talked to

8:39

about what they need to solve this

8:41

problem? They want the

8:44

glitches and technical errors that are continuing

8:46

to file them up. They want them

8:48

fixed. They want to hear

8:50

that students who still can't get through

8:52

and complete the federal aid form are

8:55

not being ignored, and that if

8:58

there need to be more workarounds that

9:00

enable the FAFSA saga of

9:02

2024 to subside,

9:04

it needs to happen now, or a few weeks

9:06

away from the Fourth of July. They

9:09

just want these problems

9:11

fixed. That

9:17

was Eric Hoover, a writer for the Chronicle

9:19

of Higher Education. This

9:23

episode was produced by Alejandra

9:25

Marquez-Hansay, Linnea Anderson, and Brianna

9:27

Scott. It was edited by

9:29

Tenbeat Ermeyas and Courtney Dorning,

9:31

Sequoia Carrillo, and Janet Ujong

9:33

Lee contributed reporting. Our executive

9:35

producer is Sami Yennigan. It's

9:42

Consider This from NPR. I'm Sasha Pfeiffer.

9:48

Rickwood Field is the oldest baseball

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field in the U.S. It's also

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where comedian Roy Wood Jr. spent

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Racism was around, but its baseball

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