President Obama is working on removing barriers to students obtaining financial aid for which they qualify. Changes to the FAFSA filing period’s submission date will make the application process faster, easier and enable students to get earlier financial aid award notification. This will provide graduating (and transfer) students with valuable information they can use to help identify the best college match.
The transition means that:
- For the 2017-18 school year, students can submit the FAFSA as early as October 1, 2016 (two months ahead of the current submission date).
- Students will submit their 2017-18 school year FAFSAs with year 2015 financial information.
- 2017-18 school year is the first year that “prior-prior” (in other words, 2 years back) financial information for parents and student will be used for the FAFSA.
- Most parents and students will be able to use the IRS automatic retrieval tool to import tax return information directly into the FAFSA without needing to type it in (because 2015 tax returns filed by April 15, 2016 will have been processed by October 1, 2016).
- PELL grant award information will become available to graduating high school students (and college transfer students) months earlier in the college application process. This will aid families in selecting a school that offers the right combination of academic and financial opportunity for the student.
- In order to accommodate the new FAFSA submission date, filing students will fill out two FAFSAs in calendar year 2016:
- The school year 2016-17 FAFSA after the old submission opening date on January 1, 2016;
- The school year 2017-18 FAFSA after the new submission opening date on October 1, 2016. (See chart above.)
From the Federal Student Aid website:
On Sept. 14, 2015, President Obama announced significant changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) process that will impact millions of students. Starting next year, students will be able to do the following:
