FAFSA Simplification Act

On Nov. 15, the Department of Education announced to higher education financial aid offices, stating the 2024-25 FAFSA will open to students and families by Dec. 31, 2023. Schools will not receive the FAFSA until possibly as late as Jan. 31, 2024. At that time, corrections and updates can be made. Check with the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships to determine if corrections are necessary.

After the 2024-25 aid year, the FAFSA will be available Oct. 1 as usual.

You will use 2022 tax information to complete the 2024-25 FAFSA.

The FAFSA will contain fewer questions and requirements, and you'll transfer tax information using a direct data exchange with the IRS instead of the previous IRS Data Retrieval Tool currently used.

This method is not recommended.

The paper application for the FAFSA will be available in PDF form by Dec. 31, 2023 on studentaid.gov. Applications completed through this method will need to be mailed by the student or family to the Department of Education for processing. There is currently no known date regarding when schools will receive information from paper applications for the 2024-25 year.

Students and families are highly encouraged to use the online application.

The FAFSA still asks how many of your family members are in college, but that number will be excluded from the federal, state, and institutional financial aid calculation.

Key terms

• Student Aid Index: For academic years 2023-24 and prior, the SAI is called the Estimated Family Contribution, or EFC.
  • This is the need analysis formula used to determine eligibility for financial aid.
  • This number may now be a negative number.
• Contributor: Contributors are those required to provide information for the FAFSA, including the student, student's spouse, the student's biological or adopted parent, and the parent's spouse.
  • If your parents are divorced or separated, the contributing parent is the parent (and their spouse, if remarried) who provided the greater portion of your financial support during the 12 months immediately prior to submitting the FAFSA. It is not automatically the parent you primarily lived with during the previous 12 months.
• Consent: Consent must be given by each tax-filing contributor to transfer data from the IRS to the FAFSA.
  • This data transfer is now required and is no longer optional.
  • If consent is not given, you will not be eligible for federal financial aid.
• FAFSA Submission Summary: Currently known as the Student Aid Report, or SAR, this report summarizes your FAFSA information.

The new SAI calculation adjustments will expand federal Pell Grant eligibility to more students.