Students and their families, along with college financial aid administrators, hoped the 2025-26 school year would be a return to normalcy. Financial aid administrators continue to deal with problems even as the school year quickly approaches. But ultimately, financial aid advocates conceded that they'd rather have a delayed-yet-functional application than an on-time and glitchy one. There's not much applicants can do at this point to ease stress about the financial aid timeline. Still, Vasconcelos shares three tips for incoming or current college students as the upcoming financial aid cycle approaches.

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