How does FAFSA work?

I’m still confused about FAFSA. I will like to have more info in greater depth. My counselors have talked about this, but I’m still confused about how it works. Do you need to apply for it to start applying for scholarships? I noticed that when I was looking for scholarships the requirements were to have FAFSA completed in order to finish the application. Why is this?

It’s a central clearing house that means colleges and foundations do not have to have their own forms to verify your financial details. Yes, you will need to fill it out if you want any sort of aid or scholarships.

https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAFSA

If the specific scholarships you are applying for require the FAFSA, you must complete it. Some scholarships are solely merit based and do not require the FAFSA.

Your FAFSA will be available on January 1 if you are a HS senior.

The FAFSA also needs to be completed, and submitted to each college to,which you apply for admission IF you want to be considered for need based aid. The FAFSA primarily is used to determine eligibility for federally funded need based aid. But some schools use the financial information on the FAFSA to award institutional need based aid as well.

You need to check every college website for the schools you are applying to. You need to see what their financial aid application requirements are…and the deadlines. Do not miss those deadlines.

You also want to make,sure you get your 2015 taxes done ASAP. This is not the year to,wait until April 15 to get them done. Get them,done ASAP after February 1. Most schools will require you to link your FAFSA to,the IRS data retrieval tool.

FAFSA is an application: Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

You fill out that FAFSA form, online, beginning in January, and you turn it in before MARCH 2.

That application gets sent to the schools you are applying to.

The universities look at your information to see, which, if any scholarships you may qualify for or fit. Then, they put together a page of offers (money) and they send that to you when you are admitted to your schools.

Keep asking questions. It’s smart of you to want to be prepared.

Please give more info, are a Jr or sr?

Federal aid is very limited, it won’t usually pay for all your college, but you usually have to file one (fafsa) to get any aid based on limited income from anyone else too. Federal, state, and college based financial aid usually starts with Fafsa. The reason is that it is the document that links to tax info to see if you qualify for aid.

The other way to qualify is not based on income but on merit which means you may have high enough gpa test scores. If so you may not have to file fafsa if you are a high income family.

https://fafsa.ed.gov/deadlines.htm#

there are deadlines for state aid too and the colleges have FA deadlines

Some scholarships from organizations, not colleges, take need into account, and so require FAFSA.

My daughter has interviewed for a particular scholarship at a certain college. The college is requiring the FAFSA to be filled out by 02/01/16 before scholarships announcements. We won’t have our taxes filed by then, but we’ll fill out our taxes as close as possible; use those numbers for FAFSA and then report real numbers when they come in.

if certain scholarships require the fafsa, you’ll want to get your parents to get their taxes done or estimated as close as possible before the deadlines.

in our state, there’s a large, generous scholarship for kids with a FAFSA efc of $15,000 or less. This scholarship requires kids to fill out the form and know their EFC (expected family contribution) before applying. Your parents income is the biggest determining factor on EFC number.