Although the National Student Financial Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has undergone several changes to simplify and fast-track its application process, the processing of applications on time remains an issue for some prospective students.
Since this also happens to be an issue that NSFAS is aware of, the bursary scheme has recently stated that the delays are often caused by students not paying close attention to their funding application statuses.
If you are among this cohort's student funding applicants, this can be done by regularly tracking your application status on your myNSFAS account. You will likely come across the following main reasons behind your application delay:
Awaiting Academic Eligibility:
This means applications are being processed daily as NSFAS continues to receive results from institutions.
Awaiting Supporting Documents:
All applications received have been evaluated. These are applications that have been evaluated, but NSFAS is waiting for students to provide supporting documents. For this, students are given 14 days to submit the required documents. Failure to do so within this set period results in the closure of the application
Awaiting Financial Eligibility:
The awaiting financial eligibility numbers are coming from the submitted documents that have gone through the case management indicated above. The financial eligibility assessment is also based on SARS verification. This process takes between 72hrs to 5 days to receive feedback from SARS.
Provisionally Funded:
This means that, as an applicant, your funding application has been approved, however, to access this funding you need to be admitted and registered to a public university or TVET college.
It is very important that you make a habit of tracking the progress of your NSFAS application upon submitting it, as not doing so can leave you at the mercy of having no funding for your tertiary studies.
