INDIANA – Filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, is one of the most important steps your family can take to pay for college.
It costs nothing to fill out the FAFSA form. It’s worth taking the time to complete it even if you believe you’re ineligible for any financial aid, as the information you submit is also used to determine eligibility for non-federal scholarships and grants. Additionally, if a website requires you to pay to fill out the FAFSA, then that isn’t the Federal Student Aid website. Any official government website will have .gov in the URL.
The FAFSA opens on Oct. 1 each year and is the financial aid form for accessing grants, federal student loans, and work-study funds. The application has an online version – which can be filled out using a computer, tablet, or mobile phone – and a paper version.
Both incoming and current students will have until June 30, 2024, to submit their completed FAFSA form.
While June 30, 2024, is the federal deadline for submitting your application, some colleges, every state, the District of Columbia, four U.S. territories, three Oceanian countries, and Guam have set their own individual deadlines for the 2023–24 academic year and/or have additional rules or forms. Before filling out the FAFSA, you should confirm whether your location of residence and the college(s) you’re interested in applying to have their own deadlines, which may require checking with your financial aid office and/or an administrator. Additionally, some states have a limited amount of financial aid they can award, so the deadline for these states is whenever these funds are depleted.
In Indiana be sure to get your FAFSA filed no later than April 15 to be considered for state grant programs. FAFSAs submitted after April 15 will not be considered for state grants, and corrections must be completed by May 15.
It’s important to remember that all students must file the FAFSA every year while in college. And, students in 21st Century Scholars must file, even if they’re not planning on enrolling in the fall.
Additionally, legislation passed in 2021 means that the FAFSA will be different for this academic year. Due to the passage of the FAFSA Simplification Act, a series of changes to the FAFSA are currently slated to go into effect between July 1, 2023, and July 1, 2024.
How to Apply
The FAFSA is what the United States Department of Education uses to determine your eligibility for financial aid. As part of the application, you will need to provide your Social Security number (SSN); your driver’s license number (if applicable); your Alien Registration number (if you are not a U.S. citizen); federal tax information, tax documents, or tax returns for yourself and your spouse (if you are married); records of your untaxed income; and information on your other financial assets (including cash, savings and checking account balances, investments, and business/farm assets.). Additionally, if you are a dependent student, you will also need to provide your parents’ SSNs, additional tax documents, untaxed income records, and other financial asset information.
All of this information is utilized by the Education Department when deciding your expected family contribution (EFC) and whether you qualify for need-based financial aid (i.e., Pell Grants, Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (FSEOG), direct subsidized loans, Federal Work-Study) and/or non-need-based financial aid (i.e., direct unsubsidized loans, PLUS loans, and Teacher Education Access for College and Higher Education (TEACH) grants).
There are effectively three ways to file the FAFSA form:
- Create a FSA ID (if you haven’t already) and log in on Federal Student Aid’s FAFSA webpage to apply online (applicants could previous apply through the myStudentAid mobile app, but this was retired on June 30, 2022).5
- Complete and print the form-fillable 2023–24 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®), then mail pages three through eight to: Federal Student Aid Programs, P.O. Box 7654, London, KY 40742-7654.6
- Request a print-out of the 2023–24 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form by calling 1-800-4-FED-AID (1-800-433-3243); then fill out the form and mail it to the address listed above.
