The U.S. Department of Education will implement changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid beginning this fall to ease the financial aid process for students and their families.
Beginning with the 2017-2018 application cycle, students will be able to apply for aid as soon as Oct. 1, three months earlier than in previous years. The earlier availability will align the financial aid application process more closely with the college admission process, allowing students more time to explore and understand financial aid options and apply for aid before state and school deadlines.
Additionally, the new application will require tax information from two years prior to the school year instead of last year’s information. For instance, a student applying to attend college in the fall of 2017 will fill out the FAFSA with income information from 2015. This will eliminate the need for students and their parents to estimate income information or delay submitting the FAFSA until taxes have been filed.
Because students and their families will have already completed their taxes by the time they fill out the FAFSA, they will also be able to use the FAFSA’s IRS data retrieval tool to automatically populate the application with their tax information.
Ron Day, KSU’s director of the Office of Student Financial Aid, is the chair of a committee that worked with Congress and the White House to make these improvements to the application. His work culminated in an executive order signed by President Barack Obama in September 2015.
“It’s our hope that students will apply much sooner so that they can know what their financial aid eligibility is sooner, so they can prepare for any out-of-pocket expenses they may have,” he said.
According to Day, 89 percent of KSU students receive some form of financial aid, amounting to more than $325 million.
Day hopes that the extended availability period will encourage students to have their applications submitted by Dec. 1 to alleviate pressures on both themselves and the financial aid office, but he maintained that KSU’s April 1 priority deadline for FAFSA submission will not change. He also added that the financial aid office will be adding more counselors to ease the transition period.
“Our role is to ensure students have the resources they need to come to school,” he said.