Students planning to enrol with Middle Georgia College and wishing to seek financial assistance are now required to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) from this summer.
Georgia Student Finance Application, which is being used by the college for the past few years, will become obsolete from June 8.
Critics have already warned the students that the proposed financial assistance process is set to get more complex and tedious.
The new application form verifies whether students are legal citizens. The students will be required to produce either sworn affidavits or citizenship documents or will be asked to fill out the FAFSA form.
Once the application is submitted, FAFSA checks the databases to verify the details.
On the other hand, the Georgia Student Finance Application simply asks the students to check the boxes depending upon their citizen and non-citizen status.
In addition, the state application was valid for seven years but the FAFSA expires at the end of every academic year.
As the FAFSA is given to need-based students only, prospective students must provide in-depth income information.
"With the FAFSA, both students and parents will have to go out and complete the form and include income from previous years, and that can be complicated sometimes," Patricia Simmons, director of financial aid at Middle Georgia State College, said.
It gets all the more difficult for students whose parents have been divorced and re-married. Confusion arises over which parent's income to use.
