For most students, financial aid is one of the most critical, and therefore stressful, aspects of their education.
In fact, to ensure understanding of the extent to how important financial aid is to a modern-age student, the National Center for Education Statistics measured 85 percent of all students at 4-year universities received financial aid in some form as of the 2015-16 school year.
With this being acknowledged, one would hope any university worth its salt would make its financial aid department a top priority every year. Yet, for all its years of accreditation, success and growth, Mississippi State University has consistently sported a sub-par financial aid department, and this is not a new issue. 
In the seemingly archaic era of 2009, a student journalist of our very own “The Reflector,” Rachael Smith, penned an article outlining the hoops students had to jump through in regards to, and more importantly, the inefficiency associated with the financial aid department. She also interviewed several students about their experiences with the department, including Sean Daves, a junior experiencing delays with his Pell grant and student loans at the time.
“They told me just to wait. They keep telling me it’ll be about a week, but that was a month ago. They won’t tell me why. They won’t tell me anything,” Daves explained.
The sad thing is, one could take this quote from almost 10 years ago and apply it to a litany of MSU students today. I can personally attest to this exact scenario happening to me on multiple occasions since I started here 3 years ago, and I have interacted with more people than I can count who can say the same.
Whether you submit your FAFSA a month late, your account gets pulled for extra verification forms, or someone just makes a simple mistake along the way, you could potentially be visiting Garner Hall on a daily basis for weeks to ensure the process moves at an acceptable speed. With this said, visiting Garner Hall will be your only way to keep up with the situation and push for it to be resolved. Calling them will result in the phone ringing off the hook or a non-informative answer being given, with some cases resulting in outright rudeness. 
On top of this, refund dates are seemingly pushed back every year, communication on policy changes is generally poor and paying or receiving money is made more difficult than it needs to be. Overall, it is a massive headache to deal with financial aid here at MSU, and while it might not be atypical amongst universities, it does not indicate acceptability.
For the amount of debt some students have to sink themselves into to receive a near-essential piece of paper, it should not be too much to ask for an easier time with financial aid. Some students, myself included, rely on financial aid to pay their rent and help buy groceries, in addition to the obvious reliance for tuition and associated fees.
For out-of-state students, it would not be a stretch to assume a good number of them may even need their aid in order to have the funds needed for transportation back to Starkville for the school year. It just needs to be faster and more efficient, plain and simple.
I may not have the background or enough information on the logistics to complete a comprehensive plan for changes, but me and every other student I have ever spoken to on the subject know enough to say it is one of the biggest issues in attending this school.
If the financial aid workers are too burdened, hire more people for the department. If regulations are stifling the system from working efficiently, find ways to loosen them. I simply refuse to believe there nothing can be done about this.
MSU students are the lifeblood of the university, the reason its exists at all, policies should always be created and amended with these students in mind.  Considering this particular problem has persisted for at least a decade, it seems as though the university has forgotten its purpose is to help the students along their educational journey. As someone who is proud to attend MSU, I hold it to a higher standard, and I believe it should do the same with itself.