FAFSA, which stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is needed for a student to be eligible for federal grants, work-study, and student loans. Completing FAFSA gives you access to a larger source of financial aid to pay for college or career school.
To fill out the FAFSA form you need to create a FSA ID; to do so, go to this link StudentAid.gov/fsa-id/create-account/launch. To fill this out, you will need your Social Security number, full name, and date of birth.
The next step is to go to this link fafsa.gov and start by selecting “ I am a student and want to access the FAFSA form” then log in by using your FSA ID. If your parent is filling it out, they can select “I am a parent filling out a FAFSA form for a student.” After they select the parent role, they will provide the students” information.
Following that you now need to fill out the student demographic section For this you need your name and date of birth; if you have already filled the FAFSA form in the past, or logged into FAFSA using your FSA ID, your information should already be saved.
After that, you will list all the schools you’re considering for college, even if you haven’t received an acceptance letter yet. Even if you don’t get accepted to a school you listed, there’s no need to remove it from your FAFSA because the school will remove it themselves.
Next are the dependency status questions; for this, you’ll need to respond to a series of questions to determine whether you need to provide parent information on the FAFSA form.
Now you need to fill out the parent’s demographic section, and you can start this by figuring out who counts as your parent(s) on the FAFSA form, then proceeding by filling in the information as needed.
The next step is to provide your financial information; this step will be very simple if you use the IRS data revival tool (DRT). This tool allows you to import your IRS tax information into the FAFSA form within seconds, which can reduce the amount of paperwork you need to provide to your school.
Lastly, you need to sign and submit your FAFSA. To do this, you and your parents simply sign the form, and the quickest way to do this is online using your FSA ID. Since your FSA ID has all the important information needed, you won’t need to fill it out again.
