What To Do If NSFAS Appeal Is Unsuccessful?

You have an ‘unsuccessful’ application status after you applied to NSFAS for student funding. What do you do if this happens to you? You have landed on the right place, you’ll learn what to do if your NSFAS appeal is unsuccessful. First-time and continuing students who applied for the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) bursary are not exempted from facing an unsuccessful application.

Once your application is rejected, it means you can’t be funded by NSFAS, which could be due to several reasons.

Reasons why your NSFAS application may have been unsuccessful:

• NSFAS completed third-party checks on your household income and saw that your household income is above the required threshold of R350 000 or R600 000 for people with a disability.
• You’re a student who registered at a University before 2018 and because of this, your household income does not match that threshold of R122 000.
• You have exceeded the number of years NSFAS is able to fund you according to the N+ rule.
  • It is important to further note that, the N+ rule is not based on the number of years that a student has been funded, but on the number of years that the student has been registered for tertiary study at any public university in South Africa
  • If you’re a continuing student then they could have found that you failed to meet the academic requirements and your funding was therefore discontinued.

If you feel you were unfairly denied and you have evidence to support your claim, you can file a complaint with NSFAS. If you appeal, NSFAS will re-evaluate your application.

NSFAS appeals are made online through the myNSFAS student portal.

Now, here is how you can submit your NSFAS appeal;

1. Log into your “MyNSFAS” account on www.nsfas.org.za​
2. Click the ‘Track Funding Progress’ option
3. Check the application progress tabs
4. If your application status reflects an unsuccessful message, you may submit an appeal by clicking on the ‘Submit Appeal Tab’
5. Once you are on the ‘Application Appeal’ page, you can see the reason for your unsuccessful application status
6. You are then able to choose the appeal reason
7. Then upload certified supporting documents to support your reason
8. Then click ‘Submit Appeal’
9. You may now track the progress of the appeal on your myNSFAS account.

At most, it usually takes 30 days for NSFAS to respond to appeals.