College students who just got their dorm room organized this school year will suddenly face the chore of tackling financial aid paperwork for the 2017-18 academic year.
Oct. 1 is the new kick-off for FAFSA®, the federal government’s one form for Federal Student Aid. Completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid FAFSA is the first step toward getting federal aid for college, career school, or graduate school.
More than $150 billion in grants, work-study funds, and loans are made available each year, says Carol Ehlers, a human sciences specialist in family finance with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, but students have to complete the FAFSA to see if they qualify.
According to Ehlers the new 2017–18 academic year provides the FAFSA application at an earlier date and requests older income information.
Ehlers says US Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid announcement reports that the 2017–18 FAFSA is available for applicants to fill out beginning on Oct. 1, 2016. This is three months earlier than the traditional FAFSA launch date of Jan. 1. This early October launch date will continue in future years.
She says the federal announcement also reports changes for the use of information from applicants’ 2015 tax returns to complete the 2017–18 FAFSA.
Traditionally, the FAFSA has requested information from the tax return due near the beginning of the application cycle. For instance, the 2016–17 FAFSA requires 2015 tax information, which some applicants did not have available in time for school or state deadlines that fell early in 2016. But subsequent FAFSA filings will request data from tax returns that should already have been filed, simplifying the process for applicants.
Ehlers encourages students and families to go to the Federal Student Aid website for more information: https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa
A new set of 10 brief fact sheets created by the national Extension system offers consumer friendly information about different ways to pay for education and training beyond high school at: http://articles.extension.org/pages/72895/student-loans
Stay connected with this and other personal finance topics by subscribing to the ISU Human Sciences Extension and Outreach MoneyTip$ Blog at: https://blogs.extension.iastate.edu/moneytips/
