Bursaries from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) help millions of South Africans achieve their post-school academic goals. However, some applicants may have not seen a change in their funding status after submitting an application.
In order to access your NSFAS application and track your status, follow these steps:
- Login on the myNSFAS student portal.
- Enter your username and password, then click SIGN IN.
- Click on Track Funding Progress.
Once you have submitted your application, the status will read "application submitted".
If stuck, this means the system is having issues and delays. There are no issues with application itself; the problem is from Nsfas' side. The government bursary scheme has said that they are still working on perfecting their back end and that is why some applicants will see their Nsfas status unchanged for a while.
It may take some time for your application to be successful, so patience is advised.
Nsfas has to move through nine steps of an application evaluation, and they won't move from one step to the next until everything for that step has been checked and completed.
After your NSFAS application has been submitted, the next step (on Nsfas' side) would be verifying your information, potentially asking for additional/supporting documents and information, checking your financial eligibility with SARS and/or awaiting confirmation of your academic eligibility.
There might also be delays because NSFAS is waiting for information from SARS, which will see the applicant stuck on the financial eligibility phase; but once everything has been verified, applicants will then receive provisional funding status.
Once registered, you will be funded.
It's important to note that unsuccessful applicants have just 30 days to appeal their rejection status upon receiving the outcome of their funding application, if applicants feel that they should qualify and were unfairly rejected.
The scheme has cautioned applicants that their funding status will not immediately change after submitting an appeal. This came after applicants questioned why their funding status has not changed after submitting all the relevant documentation earlier this year.
At the time, Nsfas said, “You are not funded by Nsfas yet. You will only appear on the funded list if your funding or appeal is approved. You will need to wait until an outcome is reached for your appeal”.
