Citrus County Coalition volunteer and student coach Ethan Vincent called hundreds of students to offer help completing the 2024-25 FAFSA form.
Throughout the summer, Citrus County students experiencing errors with their 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form turned to a local phone number for help.
“People called me at the weirdest times,” said Madison Beauregard, a freshman at the Withlacoochee Technical College. “I could be doing nothing, expecting calls all day long, and once I leave the house, my phone is blowing up.”
Beauregard is a self-proclaimed expert on circumventing FAFSA form errors.
“Some of the errors are just silly. Like a blank space where their email is and it’s super easy, to fix,” said Beauregard.
Citrus County Coalition volunteer and student coach, Madison Beauregard successfully helped complete nearly 50 FAFSA applications through one-on-one calls.
She and several other students are working with the Citrus County Coalition’s (CCC) #DoTheFAFSA campaign. The campaign is a rapid response initiative to remedy the problems caused by a recent FAFSA overhaul, outlined in the FAFSA Simplification Act and the FUTURE Act in 2019. The changes confused many student applicants about how to solve with various errors to successfully complete the form.
CCC is one of several Florida community coalitions that received funding from a U.S. Department of Education award program administered by ECMC to boost FAFSA completion rates.
Volunteer students already working with CCC learned about the form’s errors in January thanks to their Summer RISE (Resources, Information, Support =Enrollment) program, a collaborative partnership with the Citrus County School District, College of Central Florida, YMCA of the Suncoast, and The Chronicle. The program is launched every summer to meet with rising seniors and prepare them for college and careers throughout the school year.
Since CCC’s student volunteers were already working with seniors to complete the FAFSA, they were on the frontlines, experiencing the errors as they came up. Their team began recording the errors to help share solutions quickly.
Rising seniors in Citrus County learn about financial aid at the annual Summer Rise program held at the College of Central Florida Lecanto Campus.
“My personal phone number became the hotline for calls with identifying problems,” said Patrick Simon, president of CCC. “When the grant came forward, we then decided we were going to pay our students.”
Since May, students coaches working with CCC’s summer FAFSA initiative called nearly all of Citrus County’s graduating high school seniors. Thanks to a shared list of students, CCC’s team was able to identify students who hadn’t completed their form and reached out individually. Then, each student was called one by one.
“There was definitely a handful of students that were surprised by my phone call and were grateful that I reached out to them and wanted help,” said Ethan Vincent, a senior at the University of Florida.
Patrick Simon, Citrus County Coalition President, encourages a roomful of students to prepare for college and careers during this year’s Summer Rise event.
One of the students Vincent was able to help had a problem with their parents’ information, which didn’t perfectly match up with theirs.
“I helped them solve the problem within 10 minutes,” Vincent said.
As of August 2, Citrus County Coalition reports show 446 FAFSA completions, nearly matching their 2023-24 completions during the same period. Thirty-nine percent of their completions are due to the student coaches, whose work was funded by the U.S. DOE grant. There are 471 submitted FAFSA applications with errors that will need further attention.