The University of Iowa successfully navigated the complexities of changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), becoming one of the first universities in the Big Ten and the first in the State of Iowa to package 24-25 Financial Aid Offers for students on April 16, 2024.  

Students use the form to apply for federal grants, work-study funds, and loans, and to qualify for scholarships. It also helps to determine eligibility for state and school aid, and some private loans. The 2020 FAFSA Simplification Act required a total overhaul of the 24-25 FAFSA and the entire application processing system. 

“Essentially, this act changed the foundational aspects of how institutions calculate, award, and disburse federal aid,” says Brenda Buzynski, assistant provost and director of Student Financial Aid at Iowa. “This was a massive undertaking, and the impact of these changes is profound, impacting 82% of Iowa’s 32,000-plus students who receive nearly $500 million in financial assistance.” 

Operating under a compressed timeframe, Iowa’s teams kept the project moving by anticipating how the Department of Education would handle FAFSA data and using their own test data. They delivered 15,500 financial aid packages just four weeks after receiving 24-25 FAFSA results—a process that usually takes 12 weeks. By the end of May, the financial aid office had prepared over 28,000 Financial Aid Offers. This early packaging contributed to an unprecedented increase in fall 2024 enrollment. 

Project partners included Information Technology Services (ITS), the Office of Student Financial Aid, the Office of Admissions, and the Enrollment Management Analytics Team. The Billing Office and their IT team played a key role in assisting with new Pell Grant calculations. 

“It was a monumental team effort,” Buzynski says. “We would not have been able to effectively accomplish receiving, loading, reviewing submitted FAFSA results, requesting required documents, and packaging aid for the 24-25 academic year in a timely manner without everyone being ‘all in.’” 

Iowa’s student-record system is called MAUI, which stands for Made at the University of Iowa. The flexibility of a custom-built student record system was beneficial to the project, which required pivots as new developments unfolded, says Adam Pyatt, lead application developer in ITS Administrative Systems. 

“We engineered all these changes with new data rules, regulations, protocols, and with unknown information,” Pyatt says. “We were able to adapt to change quickly, modify systems immediately, and be nimble enough to identify and capture the aid application data as needed.”   

Many people have expressed appreciation for the smooth transition. A faculty member reported that several students they met at orientation had chosen Iowa because it was on top of the financial aid process amid all the changes. A parent sent a thank-you note for help with his daughter’s aid.  

“You were very efficient with our revised FAFSA,” the father wrote. “Thank you for helping run such an efficient operation.”