• NSFAS is urging students who have applied for funding to check their status after new funding is secured.
• Nearly 2 million applications were received by the scheme before the start of the academic year.
• You can check your NSFAS status by heading to MyNSFAS.com and other methods.

The 2024 academic year is officially on, and tertiary students have slowly been trickling back into campuses across the country. Among those are students whose education is funded by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). If you are one of the nearly 2 million people who applied to NSFAS, you should check your status now as the scheme says new updates to its list of provisionally funded applicants have been added as it received “a significant increase in funding.”

According to the scheme, over 1 million students have been provisionally funded, which is just over half of the total applications it received since late last year.

Despite mounting organisation issues at NSFAS, including not having a stable CEO and an ongoing corruption investigation involving its four fintech partners, the scheme has decided to continue disbursing funds as if nothing is different in order to meet the needs of the young people under its purview.

How to check your NSFAS student in 2024:

For those looking to check their application status, first head to the NSFAS online portal found here. If you have already applied you should be able to log back in through this link.

The system that NSFAS uses to perform the status checks has improved significantly over the last few years. No longer do students have to check their status through universities, instead they can now check them by themselves through the online portal.

Once on the portal, you need to enter your username and password to sign in. Then click “Track Your Funding Progress” to check your NSFAS application status. Remember it may take a while for your application to be approved or declined so try to be patient, even though the academic year has begun.

Last year students could use a USSD code to check their NSFAS status. They would dial 12067327# and follow the onscreen prompts. However, it seems this USSD is no longer working as of time of writing.

If your application has been unsuccessful, NSFAS allows you to appeal. Simply head to your NSFAS account on the portal and click on the “Appeal” tab. The scheme says that the appeal and supporting documents must be submitted within 30 days of receiving the application results.