Woohoo! I just submitted my FAFSA!

Paying for College
1

<p><em>glad that's over</em></p>

<p>And I got it out of the way so quickly!</p>

2

<p>you were up until 2 in the morning doing your fafsa on New Year's Day?</p>

3

<p>I have a question: Does my dad and I both have to retrieve a PIN to sign the FAFSA?</p>

4

<p>Yes...if the student is a dependent then both the student and one parent needs to sign with a pin</p>

5

<p>my mom does not get her tax forms until jan 30,which means i cant fill out fafsa until after that date, will that effect my chances of getting govt aid?</p>

6

<p>anxious1, we're supposed to estimate the 2004 information to the best of our abilities. Later, we have to send in copies of the actual forms, so the numbers will be adjusted accordingly.</p>

7

<p>i finished mine too!</p>

8

<p>one question though, i have 12 schools I applied to, does anyone know when i can change the schools that receive my fafsa report so that the other 6 schools that i couldn't list can get them? </p>

<p>Is it after I get my EFC?</p>

9

<p>My parents don't get their tax return until the second week of jan. Will that affect anything?</p>

10

<p>you can make estimates based on 2003 tax return. My parents don't do their taxes till like february so i used 2003's.</p>

11

<p>But my parents said that it would be wiser to use 2004's becasue they "aren't making nearly the same amount as they were last year: ~-$10000." So they want to use 2004 so they would get more aid or something like that. Is their logic correct?</p>

12

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<p>You must look at the deadlines provided by the schools. Some request that the FAFSA be filed by a certain date in January. If that is the case, you MUST do so, and you will be indicating "will file" under your filing status. Then you will use the 2003 info to complete the FAFSA. Your parents will need to complete their tax return ASAP after they receive all their W-2 forms. Once that is done, you go and amend your FAFSA using the 2004 return. The most important thing here is DO NOT MISS DEADLINES. If the school says do it by Jan 15, then do it by Jan 15 and amend it after the 2004 taxes are completed. When I inquired about this at one school (with a Jan 15 deadline for the FAFSA), they said it was so that they could get started on their finaid decisions. It was not to finalize them. They emphasized the need to adhere to the deadlines to be considered AT ALL.</p>

13

<p>You are not required to use 2003 tax forms directly. You use them as a guide only. If you know that you are about $10K less this year, by all means change those numbers on the form. If you know that you have a new investment in the portfolio that generates some more income, make that change too. The less you have to adjust when those actual 2004 returns are done, the better. Your form is going to be compared against the 2004 return ultimately, not the 2003 return.</p>

14

<p>so go ahead and fill it using the 2003 form and make amendments to it later? If so, how do you do it later?</p>