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College tuition is a hefty sum for many students and their families in America: Average yearly tuition at a private university totals $42,162; $23,630 for public out-of-state tuition; and $10,662 for public in-state tuition. It’s no surprise, then, that over 85 percent of undergraduates are awarded some form of financial aid — including federal aid, state and local grants and scholarships, institutional grants and scholarships, and student loans — according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. The path to receiving money for college is through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. The FAFSA is a form students and/or their parents complete to apply for federal grants, work-study funds, and loans. Many states and colleges also use this application to determine students’ eligibility for state and school financial aid. As the name says, it is completely free to submit the application.
Last year’s FAFSA submission process for the current academic year was beleaguered by issues. The FAFSA form usually opens for the following academic year on October 1 — students must complete the form each year — but the 2024-25 FAFSA form soft-launched in late December 2023 due to changes in the application. Students were only able to gain access to the form for limited windows each day; a mistake meant students initially qualified for less aid than they should have (the calculation has been corrected); parents who did not have a Social Security number were unable to start or contribute to a student’s form; the US Education Department said that schools would not receive students’ FAFSA forms until March. Typically, schools receive this information shortly after students complete the form. Overall, FAFSA submissions were down significantly.
The changes to the form included a direct transfer of tax information from the IRS to the FAFSA form, increased eligibility for need-based grants, and the elimination of a discount for families with multiple children in college. While the updates aimed to provide an easier experience, the process frustrated many students and their families.
In order to avoid these headaches yet again, the Department of Education announced the 2025-26 FAFSA would be released on October 1, 2024 for testing with a limited number of volunteer students and institutions. All students should have access to the form by December 1, 2024.
If you are planning to attend college and want to receive financial aid for the fall 2025 and spring 2026 semesters, this is the form you will complete. The Federal Student Aid office has a webpage dedicated to announcements related to the overhauled FAFSA that you can check regularly for any updates.
The federal deadline to complete the 2025-26 FAFSA is June 30, 2026, though each college and state has its own deadline by which they need students to complete the form. Even though the federal deadline falls after the school year ends, financial aid funds can be applied retroactively to what you already paid that year for tuition. (If you haven’t yet completed the form for the current academic year, it’s still not too late: that deadline is June 30, 2025.) Unfortunately, some aid is distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, a frustrating reality for students who were not able to complete their 2024-25 form due to persistent issues.
There is no income cutoff to be eligible for federal student aid, so all college students are encouraged to apply.
Whether it’s your first time applying for financial aid or you’re well-practiced, here’s a primer on how to complete the FAFSA, including tips for both the 2024-25 and 2025-26 forms.
Where do I find the FAFSA form?
The 2025-26 FAFSA form, along with the 2024-25 FAFSA form, will be online at StudentAid.gov. If you have not previously applied for financial aid, create a Federal Student Aid ID. “The FSA ID is used to sign the FAFSA,” says Dean Bentley, the executive director of financial aid engagement at the College Board. “It’ll be required for all students and parents or guardians who provide information on the FAFSA.”
If you’re a dependent student — which is any student who is under 24; is not married and does not have legal dependents; is not a graduate or professional student; is not a veteran or a member of the armed forces; or is not an emancipated minor — your parent or stepparent will need to create an FSA ID, too, so they can add their information to the form as a “contributor.”
Contributors are one of the new features of the form. Anyone who will provide tax and personal information to your FAFSA form should be listed as a contributor. Contributors are determined by your dependency status, marital status, and tax filing status. (For example, a contributor for a student under the age of 24 will be their parent. Married students’ contributors will be their spouses.) Contributors, despite the name, are not expected to contribute money to your tuition, just information to your FAFSA form. Make sure the student and any contributors have their FSA ID ready to go before starting the application.
If you or your contributors have a Social Security number, use it to create your FSA ID. If you or your contributors don’t have a Social Security number, check the box that says “I do not have a Social Security number.” You’ll be asked to input your Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) later in the form.
Contributors will receive an email informing them that they need to complete information for the student’s FAFSA. Contributors should try to complete their portion sooner rather than later. If there is no activity on a FAFSA for 45 days, the form is deleted and you’ll have to start again, says MorraLee Keller, the senior director of strategic programming at the National College Attainment Network. Should your contributors need more time, a student can log in to their FAFSA form to reset the 45-day window.
If you’re filling out the FAFSA on behalf of your child, make sure to select “I am a parent filling out a FAFSA form for a student.”
What information should I have on hand?
The FAFSA requires students, their parents, or other non-parental contributors to enter a host of personal information. Here’s what you should have readily available:
- Your date of birth, Social Security number, address, and email.
- Your A-Number if you aren’t a US citizen.
- Your parents’ Social Security numbers if you are a dependent student.
- Tax returns for you, your spouse (if you’re married), or your parents (if you’re a dependent student).
- Records of child support received for you or your parents (if you’re a dependent student).
- Current balances of cash, savings, and checking accounts.
- Net worth of investments, businesses, and farms.
- Records of untaxed income, if applicable.
As a part of the new FAFSA form, you’ll then need to provide consent and approval to import your federal tax information directly from the IRS. Your family’s taxes for the previous year must be completed before you can import the tax information. (For example, for the 2024-25 FAFSA, the family’s 2022 taxes must have been completed.) If you are a non-tax filer, there will be a code that the IRS will fill in that indicates you don’t have a tax return on file, Keller says. “The parts that people may have had anxiety about in the past [like] making sure they’re putting in the right numbers,” she says, “that is going to be alleviated with this process.”
Further along in the form, the student or their parents can add up to 20 colleges or career schools that will receive your information. If you already know where you’re attending college — say, you’re a rising junior and have attended the same school since freshman year — add that college to the form. If you’re still in high school and have not committed to a college yet, add any school you applied to or plan on applying to.
What about my parents?
If a dependent student is filling out the form on their own, they’ll be prompted to fill in their parents’ full names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and email addresses so they can fill in their information separately. If the student’s parents are divorced or separated, the parent who provided the most financial support over the last year will need to fill out their portion of the FAFSA. If they provided the student with equal financial support, the parent with greater income and assets should fill out the FAFSA.
Parent contributors will need their tax returns, records of child support received, current balances of cash, savings, and checking accounts, and net worth of investments, businesses, and farms. “Families that have income above $60,000 will need to report assets like cash savings, checking, real estate, stocks, bonds, and the net value of their small business or family farm,” Keller says. “While that sounds complicated, there’s a lot of instructions to help families understand,” Bentley says. “There’s even an overview video that they’ll be able to watch when they start the application.”
A dependent student’s FAFSA form is not completed until their parent (and other contributors) completes their section.
What is the deadline to apply?
Again, the earlier you apply after the application opens the better. However, there are some deadlines worth keeping in mind. Each school has a different deadline for when you need to submit your FAFSA form, so check with your school (or the schools you applied to) to see when you need to submit your application for financial aid. Every state has a different deadline, too: For example, most state financial aid programs in California required the 2024-25 FAFSA to be submitted no later than May 2, 2024. Federally, June 30 is the last day you can apply for financial aid for the previous school year.
What should I expect after I submit my FAFSA form?
After you and your contributors have finalized and sent off your FAFSA form, it will be processed in one to three days and sent to the colleges you listed on your form. After, you’ll receive an email notifying you that your FAFSA Submission Summary is ready. This summary will give you an estimate of the amount of student aid you’re eligible for. Here is where you can make corrections to your FAFSA or send additional verification information requested by your school. If you don’t need to make any changes, just keep the summary for your records.
Schools will send their aid offers in the spring before you’re set to start school.
“The student,” Keller says, “will be waiting on the award notification to let them know how much financial aid they will have for next year, whether that’s federal and state aid, as well as institutional aid. So that award notification would be the primary document that the student is waiting on to receive after they file their FAFSA.”
Update, August 28, 2024, 11:15 am: This story was originally published on November 29, 2023, and has been updated multiple times, most recently with the latest information on the 2024-25 and 2025-26 FAFSA.
