State and Nashville mayor’s office helping students apply for financial aid

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — The deadline for students to get financial aid for the 2024-2025 school year is fast approaching — and problems with the application have not made the process easy.

The state and the Nashville mayor's office are helping students apply for financial aid through FAFSA. They are hosting FAFSA completion clinics at more than a dozen locations throughout the rest of July.

Those clinics come after data showed that Tennessee had the biggest decrease in students applying for FAFSA in the country.

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"Now is the time to still focus on getting that 24, 25 FAFSA submitted so that you can be considered for financial aid for the fall semester," Jason Seay, Senior Director of Outreach with the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, said.

News 2 has previously reported reported that the new FAFSA application was plagued with issues , which put Tennessee behind other states when it came to the number of applicants.

"There's definitely been deficits year over year," Seay said. "There are still concerns that it's turned some families completely off from applying — or maybe even considering college — because of some of the stuff that they have read or heard."

The biggest deterrent: the application was released two months later than in previous years, which put more pressure on students to make decisions about college before they knew how they would pay.

"The whole timeline has just been shifted from a lateness perspective," Seay said. "We still have families that are maybe waiting on those offers from multiple colleges to make that best college decision for them in the fall."

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Nonprofits, schools and the state are stepping up their efforts to help students get the financial aid they need to continue their education.

"We're scheduling FAFSA worships in every county," Seay said. "Whether that's at community centers, libraries, colleges, even certain K-12 buildings are reopening [on] certain days simply to provide that last minute support for Tennesseans," Seay said.

For FAFSA help, head here . For a full list of FAFSA clinics through the mayor's office, head here .