Pre-Deadline Outages for College Board’s Financial Aid System

The College Board’s CSS Financial Aid PROFILE, an online aid application used by many colleges and universities, experienced periods of severe slowdowns and some “intermittent outages” on Sunday, according to a board spokeswoman. The system’s Web site notes some routine off-hour maintenance outages, but not the larger problems, which were flagged for Inside Higher Ed by readers. The spokeswoman said that the system experienced “extraordinarily high volumes” due to the Feb. 1 deadline used by many colleges, and a “higher than anticipated international student response.” The problems started at 5:30 p.m. and were largely resolved by midnight. According to the spokeswoman, information that was entered prior to an outage should have been stored and would be available when users returned to the system. She added that the College Board is waiting until after the Feb. 1 deadline to suspend operations and correct the underlying problems. “The College Board immediately sent notification to colleges and universities to ask them to be flexible about their February 1st deadline, and we will continue to communicate with schools to keep them apprised of the situation,” she said.