In keeping with his campaign promises, Obama is leading the U.S. Department of Education in unveiling a new streamlined application form for federal financial aid.  The FAFSA has long been criticised as excessively detailed, partially redundant, and adding unecessary hours of effort to parents, students, and financial aid officers.

Of course, since federal financial aid is completely based on a student’s personal (and family’s) financial need, a lot of the information is required for determining who needs the money the most.  In recent years, online application forms have been somewhat helpful in making the process easier and more efficient, but these latest reforms with really slash the time involved with financial aid.

The most significant change will be how FAFSA works with hte IRS to deliver financial and income information.  Although they’re both federal financial departments, next year will be the first time students can automatically import income data from their IRS filings into the FAFSA form.  This means no more looking around for old records – as long as the taxes have been filed for the financial information will be available for the FAFSA form.

There are also a lot of questions about finances that may no longer be considered.  In a patchwork effort to make FAFSA more “fair,” they eventually ended up asking even more questions about income and assets than even the IRS.  Many parents were obviously uncomfortable with this, and it also played a huge factor in making the financial aid application into a total chore.  Since the system is now integrated with the IRS, Obama is asking Congress to save students (and parents!) from providing even more information than the IRS needs.  I can’t imagine too many Congress members putting their reputation on the line to defend excessive bureaucracy and longer application forms.

Changes to the website itself will also help students navigate through the required and uncompleted parts of their application more quickly.  IT analysts are suggesting this will allow students to finish the application in about half as many pageviews.

Between better website structure and improved integration with IRS records, there are fewer excuses than ever to filing out your FAFSA.  There’s never any cost to apply for federal financial aid, and next year, it shouldn’t even take that much time!

8 Responses to “FAFSA Reform Makes Financial Aid Application Easier”

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  4. This is an outright LIE. There is no FAFSA reform. If you are a middle classed family, working your butt off but unable to pay for your child/ren’s tuition beware: your child will not be able to go to college unless YOU take out all of the loans. The FAFSA formula has been deleted from the internet, so you can’t find out at what “income point” our government decides is too much to recieve grants. The blogs say, no matter where you live or how many dependents, 99% of students with a parent/s that earn more than 5ok/yr are ineligible for grants. Ask your college if they have “merit scholarships” or “need based merit scholarships”. What is the difference? Good question. Expect NO questions/circumstances that will allow your family any kind of “credit”. For example, because I had cancer 8 years ago our insurance premiums (now federally mandated) for my family is 24k/yr. Or, another example, that 2o years after HS I am in college. Parents don’t count. DO expect that your child, regardless of how high the GPA, will be “offered” a small fraction of the total tuition in the form of a student loan (half of which will be subsidized), and the rest of the balance the government/school will expect from the parent/s from PLUS loans or cash. FAFSA is absolutely unfair towards working families.

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Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. 2010 Financial Aid Season Begins | Free College Blog
  2. There’s still time to apply for financial aid in 2011 | Free College Blog

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