While the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) typically opens to applicants on October 1st each year, the new FAFSA for the 2024-25 academic year saw significant delays. This is partly due to the many changes that took place with the FAFSA this year, including the introduction of a new formula to determine federal student aid called the Student Aid index (SAI). Other changes to the FAFSA for the 2024-25 academic year include updated requirements for contributors to the form and increased access to Pell Grants for applicants that meet specific income criteria.
Even though the initial launch was very late and got off to a rough start, families should now be focused on making sure you get the FAFSA filled out and completed as quickly (and accurately) as possible.
Tips To Successfully File The FAFSA
If you want or need to fill out the FAFSA for the 2024-25 academic year in the coming weeks, you need to get started. And if you’re hoping to finish up the FAFSA sooner rather than later, these expert tips can help.
According to Dan Maga II of American College Funding, the first step families should take is having all involved parties (parents and students) create a FSA ID if they haven’t already. Maga says that it takes a few days for each FSA ID to be verified by the Social Security Administration, so taking this step early on can help you move onto the next step of the process faster.
However, studentaid.gov points out that only one parent needs their own FSA ID if they’re a contributor since only one parent needs to sign the FAFSA before it’s submitted.
Financial advisor Jack Wang of Innovative Wealth Management says that some changes on the new form can be confusing for families, and that neither students nor parents get to see the form in its entirety. For example, the flow of the form is very different than in the past since students fill out their section but cannot see the parents section. Parents alo see only see their section, but not the students.
“With the new form, some students have filled out their section thinking they were done, but the parents never completed their section, or vice versa,” he said.
According to independent education consultant Rachel Coleman, who also runs the website College Essay Editor, the new FAFSA is notoriously “buggy” right now. This means you will likely need an extra dose of patience when you finally sit down to fill it out.
Coleman says that, based on her personal experience so far, some families have been inputting information for 30 minutes then been forcibly logged out of the system. Then they have to wait and try to input more information the next day.
For the best results, you should do your best to fill out the form as comprehensively as you can when you can. You can also consider waiting a few weeks to get started if you want to give the Department of Education some time to work through some of the problems people have seen.
Coleman also says that families filling out the form can use the IRS data-retrieval tool to fill out the FAFSA faster than they otherwise would. This tool is offered via the Internal Revenue Service and can be accessed directly through the FAFSA itself.
“This tool speeds things up considerably,” she said. “Yes, families still need to review all the information submitted, but at least they can save time by having the form auto-populated.”
It’s also important to follow up on the FAFSA with individual schools after it’s been submitted, says Coleman. She points out that each college has a portal that students can log in to (often called the applicant status portal) where the student can check that the FAFSA (and CSS Profile in some cases) has been officially received by the deadline.
“Given how buggy the new FAFSA form is, it’s imperative that families not just submit the form but check each school, one by one, to make sure the FAFSA has actually been received,” she said.
If the form is not received by the school by the deadline, the student needs to email the admissions team and “show them the FAFSA receipt and submission date to prove that the student submitted the form by the deadline and that the error was the FAFSA system and not the student missing the deadline.”
Finally, Maga says one of the biggest mistakes people make when filling out the FAFSA is including the value of their retirement accounts and their home’s value as assets for the purpose of calculating federal student aid.
“Another big mistake this year is people overvaluing their business, now that businesses with less than 100 employees need to be taken into account, which was not the case in previous years,” he said.
Regardless, you’ll want to make sure you fully understand which assets do and do not count for financial aid purposes on the FAFSA before you fill out the form.
Bottom Line
Filling out the FAFSA is never any fun, but this year’s form may be more difficult and time-consuming due to system bugs and processing issues. It can make sense to wait a few weeks for some of the issues to be worked out if you don’t want to deal with the current problems, but there are also reasons to file the FAFSA early — especially if you’re hoping to take advantage of aid that’s offered on a first-come, first-need basis.
My advice? Read over most of the information about the FAFSA on the studentaid.gov website, and make sure you know about all the changes that come into play with the form for the 20-24 academic year. From there, do your best to fill out the form accurately, save your work as you go, and submit the FAFSA once you’re ready.