This year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, is open for all students and families to apply. Filling out the form is essential to determining eligibility for and receiving federal financial aid for college.
Last year’s online application was riddled with glitches, and led to significant declines in numbers of applicants completing the form and delays in college financial aid offers for those who qualified.
The Report’s Shomial Ahmad spoke with Christina Galanis, the Fort Worth ISD director of secondary student engagement, for her advice on how to complete and submit this year’s financial aid form.
The interview has been edited for clarity and space.
Shomial Ahmad: Why is it important for people considering going to college to fill out the FAFSA?
Christina Galanis: Essentially, the FAFSA determines how much the government is going to subsidize a student’s education through things like federal Pell grants or federal subsidized or unsubsidized loans. With subsidized loans, the federal government subsidizes the interest on those loans while you are in college, and so you’re not accruing interest during those years. With unsubsidized loans, you do accrue interest while you are in college.
Many families don’t apply because they think that they won’t be eligible, especially if they’re more affluent families. However, many scholarships, and that includes institutional scholarships from a college, require the FAFSA before even considering a student for a scholarship.
Even if a family is more affluent and they are thinking about not applying, they may be precluding their student from eligibility from institutional scholarship funds by not having that FAFSA application on file. We highly encourage that every student fills out the FAFSA, or if they don’t have a Social Security number and they’re not eligible for FAFSA, they should fill out the TASFA — Texas Application for State Financial Aid — which is only for Texas public colleges.
Ahmad: What kind of information should a student gather and have in front of them when they’re filling out the FAFSA?
Galanis: They need their Social Security number. They need their parents’ full legal names, marital status and dates of birth.
They also need to create their FSA ID. The FSA ID is essentially their login for the FAFSA, and they can create that at studentaid.gov even before the online FAFSA application opens.
Their parent — and potentially both parents depending on their parental situation — need a FSA ID. Those IDs should be made ahead of time, so if there’s any verification process or any issues that come up in the creation of those IDs, that’s all taken care of before they sit down and apply.
Students and parents should double-check the information they enter for their FSA ID. If they have a typo in their birthday or something like that, it can cause problems down the road.
Also, it’s a good idea to have 2023 tax forms handy. The online application can import tax data, but in case something goes wrong with the linking, you can enter the information manually.
Ahmad: What’s the FAFSA application process like?
Galanis: Students can go to the FAFSA website and enter their FSA ID. In the past, it was one form. Now, the student and the parent will log in separately and complete their own part separately. The student has to identify who’s going to be the contributor to their FAFSA.
It asks basic demographic information and questions regarding financial status. There’s an option to directly link to the IRS website to grab federal income tax return data. It’s 99.99% recommended to do that because that speeds the processing greatly.
Ultimately it’ll spit out a student aid report, and that will get sent to the student. It will let the student know their potential earnings, their potential award from the federal government in the form of a federal Pell grant. It will also list all the colleges that the student can send the FAFSA to.
Ahmad: When do you recommend students apply?
Galanis: As soon as possible. They’re processed by the U.S. Department of Education in the order they’re received, as far as I’m aware. So if there are issues, the sooner you apply, the sooner those issues will be resolved.
They did extend the priority deadline for the FAFSA until Jan. 31, but it’s definitely recommended that you don’t wait until that last day of the priority deadline to apply. That would assume that everything’s going to be issue-free and go through seamlessly, and that may not be the case. That being said, there’s no true deadline for the FAFSA.
Ahmad: What were some of the issues with the FAFSA form last year?
Galanis: One of the issues that we ran into last year was with students who are citizens but have undocumented parents. There were a lot of issues with verification of status, as far as citizenship status. As a result, those students’ forms weren’t being processed because all of the people’s forms that had to contribute weren’t done. They couldn’t finish their process. Those students’ FAFSA results were severely delayed. Now, the Department of Education has said that they will troubleshoot those issues. We should see a much improved experience this year, but it remains to be seen how that’s going to go.
Ahmad: What kind of help is being offered by Fort Worth ISD and others in Tarrant County?
Galanis: FWISD has a partnership with the Tarrant To & Through Partnership and the TCU College Advising Corps. They staff our GO Centers, which help students in real time at the campuses during the school day. Students are able to fill out their forms during lunch, or when they’ve finished their work in a class.
Our campuses host FAFSA events, where students and parents can come up to the school and get assistance on the form. Students can access some online resources, through the FWISD website, and the educational nonprofit uAspire. I would encourage anyone who is having difficulty in filling out the form to seek help, whether it’s at a help center, talking to their counselor or going to a GO Center.
Shomial Ahmad is a higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report, in partnership with Open Campus. Contact her at shomial.ahmad@fortworthreport.org.
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
Related
Share this content: