Thank Sorin! We’re excited to be here and help everyone with their questions 
@jym626, colleges and universities are very aware of the new timelines, and will have to adjust their processes accordingly. Unfortunately, each college is allowed to set their own deadlines.
This means that students applying for aid this year will need to do their research on each individual institution. Make sure you check out financial aid deadlines listed on each college’s website for the most up-to-date information. We suggest using a tracker like this one to keep track of all those dates! If you want a partner to help you find all your deadlines, request a college application session on UPchieve.
@Mark_UPchieve, @Bailey_UPchieve, can you also cover the steps parents are supposed to take to complete the FAFSA?
Typically students know their approximate aid package based upon what their package is at matriculation- is there any plan to grandfather students with methodology so that families don’t discover previously affordable schools are no longer affordable? I know this is only the case for a subset of students
Apologies if use this has already been asked but they say the new fafsa opens in December what does that mean December 1st?
@kelsmom, we had to take some time to wrap our heads around the changes too! Thankfully, a good deal of the process remains the same.
- Luckily FAFSA website lays out step-by-step instructions: Federal Student Aid
- The FAFSA is designed with separate sections for students and parents, who are referred to as “contributors.” Each contributor uses their unique FSA ID to access their respective section. So make sure you, your child’s other parent(s), and your child all make FSA IDs Federal Student Aid ASAP.
- Gather your documents! Everyone’s SSNs, drivers license, tax information including W-2 or 1040s or joy! Savings account statements, assets and untaxed income too.
- As soon as the FAFSA becomes available in December, it’s crucial to submit it promptly. Pro Tip: Use your FSA ID to start your FAFSA form- this will ensure all the info lines up!
- For the 2024–2025 FAFSA, you’ll need to provide income information from the year 2022.
- If a dependent student initiates the process, they will be asked to enter contributor information in their section. If the parent “contributor” begins their section first, they will be prompted to provide student information in their section.
- You’ll receive a prompt to grant consent for the IRS to send your tax information to Federal Student Aid via the Financial Aid Direct Data Exchange. This step is required, even if you are not obligated to file taxes. Be sure to check the consent box. If you don’t, you won’t be eligible for federal student aid.
- Your FAFSA information will be electronically sent to the schools you list on the form. You can include up to 20 colleges on your FAFSA.
@J9fels No worries! There is still no official specific date for the new FAFSA opening up. All we currently know is that it opens some time in December 2023. Make sure to check the official FAFSA website for updates and announcements.
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@annabel18, each college will have their own way to address the delay as well as when they will share your aid package. However, usually colleges who require the CSS profile use that as a source of truth to develop your aid package because it covers all the same information as FAFSA and even more. They will often verify the information is the same on your FAFSA. So theoretically the CSS profile should be able to give them enough information to provide you with an aid package. In general, merit aid is not at all tied to your FAFSA; instead it’s determined solely on your academic performance (or other listed criteria). FAFSA is directly tied to “need” based aid, which factors in a family’s ability to pay to your award amount. The best thing to do is to email the financial aid office at the college you’re applying to ED to ask when the package will be ready. As always, prep your regular decision applications just in case!
Can’t figure out who to email or what to write, request a financial aid session on UPchieve!
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At what income level is it pointless to submit FASFA and should full pay parents fill it out even if they wont receive any aid.
There is always a a point. Even for potential scholarships
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@A_Guzman These changes impact all students and families filing for FAFSA. If your parents pay taxes in the US, their journey will be similar. Some big exceptions to this rule is if they don’t pay taxes in the US, don’t have a US social security number or EIN, or are undocumented. If your parent doesn’t have a Social Security number (SSN), your parent won’t be able to create an FSA ID (which requires an SSN). This means you’ll have to select the option to print a signature page when you get to the end of your FAFSA form on fafsa.gov. Often this also means they can’t use the IRS DRT tool, which is required for the new FAFSA. Federal Student Aid has some great choices on how to handle these tricky situations. In these cases, we suggest starting the process as early as possible and working directly with the FAFSA help center (we love the live chat: Federal Student Aid) to get the best advice. Be aware, it may require mailing in of signature pages, which takes many weeks to process 
so try applying day 1 and following up to see if your mail was received using the live chat feature.
Can someone elaborate on this? Are they specific schools that require FAFSA for merit aid and is there a list of them?
In other words, if you arent interested in those schools, is there a compelling reason?
@CFP Totally agree with @sillinessforBschools! Some schools have requirements to fill out FAFSA if you want to be eligible for merit scholarships (not that your ability to pay should have impact on the merit scholarships). Those donors who funded the scholarship may want to make sure that students get all aid available to them, so they included as a requirement!
@CFP I’m not aware of an official list, it’s best to do your research on each individual college you’re applying to!
@IBG Great question, the new FAFSA does require parents to use the IRS DRT. When it first launched the DRT was pretty glitchy to be sure, it’s definitely improved from the early days but it’s not glitch free. It’s important that parents set up an IRS account and make sure to file their prior prior year taxes before working on the new FAFSA. If you really want to test out the tool, you may consider filing out the 2023-2024 FAFSA to take it for a test drive. If your child is one of the growing group of students who starts Freshman year in the summer, you’ll need to fill that FAFSA out anyway.
As a current full pay family, we appreciate CFP’s query. Maybe we should have applied last year. We didn’t, but this year was financially terrible for our family. You write that the FAFSA wants information from 2022. Does the FAFSA differentiate between good years (for us, 2022 and before) and awful years (for us 2023)? Or would it be up to individual colleges to even take 2023 income into account?
You can’t take out the federally guaranteed loan without a FAFSA.
Understood. I was speaking from a full pay parents’ perspective who arent seeking loans.
@sillinessforBschools with the great questions. I think this is the hardest of all the changes that will come from launching the new FAFSA. I imagine that, again, each college will have its own policy. It’s important that for currently enrolled students to reach out to their financial aid offices to see how each college will be handling this issue. I don’t know of any widespread methodology currently available to the public unfortunately.
@Mugsy8 Do you want to get a rough estimate of your SAI? Check out: Federal Student Aid