{"id":760,"date":"2025-01-25T10:18:07","date_gmt":"2025-01-25T10:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/the-latest-fafsa-form-is-available-it-works-fine\/"},"modified":"2025-01-25T10:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-01-25T10:18:07","slug":"the-latest-fafsa-form-is-available-it-works-fine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/the-latest-fafsa-form-is-available-it-works-fine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Latest FAFSA Form is Available. It Works Fine."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Last year, in a fit of masochism, I tried to become the first person in the United States to fill out a FAFSA (short for Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form at the precise moment the Department of Education unveiled a long-delayed overhaul.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">I failed in my New Year\u2019s Eve quest because the site wasn\u2019t working, and the experience was a harbinger for millions of others. The rollout of the new FAFSA was one of the most epic digital fiascos of our time, right up there with the Obamacare website\u2019s disastrous debut and the Equifax breach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">For several months, many of the most vulnerable teenagers \u2014 people with an undocumented parent or others without a Social Security number, or students whose parents didn\u2019t speak English and made data entry errors that they then could not immediately fix \u2014 were frozen in place, unable to determine whether they qualified for the grants and loans that could make college affordable. At one school\u2019s FAFSA completion event, only 20 percent of students finished.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">This week, the department tried again, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ed.gov\/about\/news\/press-release\/us-department-of-education-announces-official-release-of-2025-26-fafsa-form\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">opening the gates<\/a> to the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/studentaid.gov\/h\/apply-for-aid\/fafsa\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">FAFSA website<\/a> after months of additional revisions and multiple rounds of beta testing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It\u2019s safe. Go ahead and fill yours out. I got through my part of the form in under 20 minutes. Importing tax information from the Internal Revenue Service was so fast that I was sure I had done it wrong. My daughter did her part in about 10 minutes. She received our results, the so-called <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/studentaid.gov\/complete-aid-process\/how-calculated\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Student Aid Index<\/a> figure, right afterward.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">We\u2019re not the people anyone should worry about, though, given our citizenship, permanent address and up-to-date income tax filings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">This year, the department did what it should have done last year: tested the form with community organizations that serve students who often have complex family situations. Those efforts have also gone well.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Last year, Christine Miller, director of college advising at the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alexscholarshipfund.org\/about-sfa\/what-we-do-2\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Scholarship Fund of Alexandria<\/a> in Virginia, used her commute home to rid herself of accumulated expletives, she said. During this year\u2019s testing phase, over 95 percent of the students her organization serves have completed their forms without incident. This includes students from families in which a parent may not have a Social Security number.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It has helped that chastened Education Department employees have been on a charm offensive. They\u2019ve gone to testing sessions and squashed bugs in real time. So far this cycle, over 167,000 people have completed their forms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">If you\u2019re ready to join them, keep a few things in mind. First-time FAFSA applicants need a so-called FSA ID number before they can start the form. A nonprofit called uAspire has a website with <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uaspire.org\/how-to-create-a-fsa-id\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">excellent<\/a> <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uaspire.org\/getattachment\/3d60b394-2ae7-40af-be08-7795bbcf8e35\/Parent-FSA-ID-flowchart.pdf?lang=en-US\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">guides<\/a> to the process of getting the FSA ID, and the Education Department has <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/studentaid.gov\/fafsa-apply\/parents\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">a tool<\/a> on its site to help people figure out which parents or others should get the ID in addition to the student.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When you sit down to fill out the FAFSA, make sure you have the pertinent income tax forms. I thought the system would transfer every bit of data that I needed, but there was a question about foreign earned income that the forms helped me answer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Next, have anyone else who may need to participate in the process \u2014 your child, your spouse, your parent \u2014 beside you or on speed dial for questions. You can save your spot and return to the form, but it is probably better to just blast through the thing in one sitting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">All of us FAFSA applicant supplicants \u2014 there could be over 15 million for this next school year \u2014 are each just the first cog in the financial aid wheel. Next, the Education Department has to seamlessly push the data to colleges. Then the schools need to be able to make corrections en masse \u2014 something else that was broken last time around.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Families sometimes see financial aid administrators as blockers whose job it is to tell them there is no more grant money available. More frequently, however, administrators are heroes who navigate a messy federal aid system that they wouldn\u2019t wish on their enemies but have no power to change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe had a meeting to ask one another what we were doing to make sure the financial aid staff was all right,\u201d said Stephen Schultheis, vice president of enrollment management at Middle Georgia State University, while explaining what the last aid season was like.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The incoming Trump administration is a wild card. The smart thing for the pick for secretary of education, Linda McMahon, to do might be to say nothing about the FAFSA. Then, if things continue to go well, she could take credit next August for work she had nothing to do with.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As for the people who really are doing the work, it\u2019s hard to erase fresh memories of disappointed teenagers coming back to them multiple times for help filling out the deadbolted form that could unlock their futures. The students remember it, too. The ones who have finished their FAFSAs this year can\u2019t quite believe that it actually worked.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cMore than once this fall, I remember hearing, \u2018That\u2019s it?\u2019\u201d Ms. Miller, director of the Scholarship Fund of Alexandria, said. \u201c\u2018Are you sure?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">That\u2019s probably it. We\u2019re kind of sure. Let\u2019s cross our fingers that we don\u2019t disappoint them again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, in a fit of masochism, I tried to become the first person in the United States to fill out a FAFSA (short for Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form at the precise moment the Department of Education unveiled a long-delayed overhaul. I failed in my New Year\u2019s Eve quest because the site [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[506,509,507,505,508],"class_list":["post-760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-loan","tag-fafsa","tag-fine","tag-form","tag-latest","tag-works"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}