Verdicts on financial aid are being delayed into next month for millions of college applicants.

I'm David Brancaccio's students and parents waiting to hear if they can pay for college have run into a new frustrating hurdle.

Many will have to wait longer until March to get the calculation on financial aid.

The Department of Education needs extra time to fix an inflation calculation error in the new financial aid application, the FAFSA.

As Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes reports, the delay is stressing out everyone involved in getting people into college.

In a normal year, prospective college students would already be getting some financial aid offers from schools.

But without the FAFSA data, schools can't calculate those offers.

Jennifer Jesse is a college admissions consultant in the DC area.

The offer letter tells the truth for the first time.

The truth about what the actual price tag for each college will be.

And the most recent delay means, counselors will have at least a month less than they

expected to go over what's a loan, what's a grant, what's a scholarship.

Money comes in a lot of different form from colleges that can be difficult to understand at 17.

Alex Rigny is a college counselor at a technology magnet high school in New York City.

He says the FAFSA delays may prompt some students to decide not to go to college at all this year.

It's a delicate dance to begin with, so I think any additional barriers is only going to

make that more challenging. Some professional associations of

higher ed officials are calling for colleges to extend their enrollment deadlines.

That would give schools more time to send those financial aid offers,

and students more time to digest them.

I'm Stephanie Hughes for Marketplace.

No surprise but the Federal Reserve left interest rates alone at the conclusion of their

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