Recent FAFSA Changes Will Make It Easier to Apply for Financial Assistance
The FAFSA deadlines have been somewhat of a pain for prospective students. You can not apply for assistance prior to the year when you want to go to college, and the time expires the deadline for your college applications, you still do not know if you are eligible for help. This complicates the process of deciding whether to go to college, but the government recently made some changes to the FAFSA that will streamline the process.
As The New York Times explains, under current regulations, students cannot apply for FAFSA (which means a free application for federal student aid) until January of the year they plan to go to college. And since you need tax information to apply for the FAFSA, most apply after April anyway.
Eligibility for financial aid is an important consideration for many students when deciding where to go to college. Ideally, you want to know what your eligibility looks like before applying (these application fees can be expensive). Fortunately, this is now possible. Starting next fall, students can file the FAFSA in October instead of January, and they can use information from that year’s tax return. For example, if you plan to go to college in September 2017, you can apply in October 2016 and use the 2015 tax return you filed earlier this year.
This way, you know in advance what your situation looks like. For more information, check out what The New York Times has to say about it at the link below.
Applying for Financial Assistance Made Easy | New York Times