Hundreds of thousands of financial aid applications need to be fixed after latest calculation error

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Education Department said it has discovered a calculation error in hundreds of thousands of student financial aid applications sent to colleges this month and will need to reprocess them — a blunder that follows a series of others and threatens further delays to this year’s college applications.

A vendor working for the federal government incorrectly calculated a financial aid formula for more than 200,000 students, the department said Friday. The information was sent to colleges to help them prepare financial aid packages but now needs to be recalculated — even as the department works through a backlog of more than 4 million other financial aid applications.

A statement from the Education Department says the problem won’t affect 1.3 million applications that were processed correctly and distributed to colleges this month. Officials said they have fixed the error and it “will not affect future records.”

Students applying for college have been left in limbo this year as they await the Education Department’s overhaul of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The form, known as FAFSA, is used to determine eligibility for federal Pell Grants, and colleges and states use it to award their own financial aid to students.

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