Westchester Community College, State University of New York

The FAFSA Simplification Act represents a significant overhaul of the processes and systems used to award federal student aid starting with the 2024–25 award year. Read full article on federalstudentaid.gov.

The 2024–25 FAFSA® form will be available by December 31, 2023, not October 1.

Create an account, username, and password (FSA ID)

Regain access to your FSA ID account name and password

Use the Federal Student Aid Estimator Tool to see how much federal student aid you may be eligible for in the 2024–25 award year*

*Uses Student Aid Index (SAI), not Expected Family Contribution (EFC).

What You Need To Know Now

The 2024–25 FAFSA form will expand eligibility for federal student aid. 610,000 new students from low-income backgrounds will be eligible to receive Federal Pell Grants due to updates to student aid calculations. Use the Federal Student Aid Estimator to get an early estimate of what your federal student aid could be after submitting the new form. The 2024–25 FAFSA form will offer a new, streamlined user experience for students and their families. Applicants will be able to skip as many as 26 FAFSA questions, depending on their individual circumstances. Some applicants will need to complete as few as 18 questions, taking less than 10 minutes. Watch our “2024–25 FAFSA FAQs” playlist to better understand what’s changed on the new form.

What You Can Do Now

Didn’t submit a 2023–24 FAFSA form? Make sure to create your StudentAid.gov account—and remember your username and password so you can access and submit the 2024–25 FAFSA form when it’s available. Find out if your parent(s) or spouse will need to be contributors (contribute their info on your FAFSA form). If your parent(s) or spouse will need to contribute to your form, make sure each contributor creates their own StudentAid.gov account. Even if a contributor doesn’t have a Social Security number, they will be able to create an account when the 2024–25 form goes live. Watch our “Preparing for the FAFSA Form” playlist to understand what information and documents you’ll need to fill out the FAFSA form.

Stay Informed

Stay informed about 2024–25 FAFSA changes and receive up-to-date notifications and information:

• Did you fill out a FAFSA form for 2023–24? We’re emailing students (and parents of dependent students) who applied on the 2023–24 form, reminding them to apply for 2024–25. To ensure you receive future updates, log in to your StudentAid.gov account and confirm we’ve got your current email address.

Follow Federal Student Aid on social media

Follow us for resources and announcements—including an alert when the new FAFSA form is available to complete.

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube (Informational Videos)
• YouTube (Educational Webinars)

When the 2024–25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form first became available, a technical issue prevented contributors without a Social Security number (SSN) from starting or accessing the form. This issue has been resolved. Students are now able to submit a fully completed FAFSA form that includes contributor information.Provided below are instructions to help students and their contributors successfully navigate the form. This includes answers to frequently asked questions and help with issues that might impact the user experience.

Issues that may impact user experience include the following:

• All contributors without an SSN, including those with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), will need to manually enter their financial information. We still encourage all impacted users to enter an ITIN, if they have one. At a later date, the U.S. Department of Education will work to retrieve federal tax information via the direct data exchange with the IRS and will reprocess the form, as necessary, to reflect any changes. There is no timeline for resolution of this issue.
• Parent contributors from the Freely Associated States are not able to start a FAFSA form on behalf of dependent students. Until this issue is resolved, students should start their own form and invite their required parent contributor(s) to participate.

Instructions for Students Who Haven’t Started a Form

To start an online FAFSA form in situations where a contributor does not have an SSN, follow the steps below. Completing these steps will help you avoid encountering errors.

LEARN MORE HERE