If the financial aid fiasco last year had you, like me, coming up with creative alternatives for the FAFSA acronym, you can take a big, deep breath. This year, the process is so much easier. 

Or maybe you’re a FAFSA newbie, and you have no knowledge of 2023’s drama—you just want the quick ‘n’ easy lowdown on what you need to do right now (yes, right now). If that’s you, welcome, gentle friend. Pay no attention to the FAFSA-induced gray hair—that won’t happen to you, because the FAFSA has (probably) been fixed.

Let’s Get To It

The US Department of Education released the 2025-2026 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) on Nov. 21. 

That means if you have a child who hopes to be in college between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026—whether they’ll be a freshman or a returning college student—and they want to qualify for financial aid, it’s time to fill out the FAFSA. 

Deadlines: Get out a pen and paper and write these down. 

1. For its own records, the federal government needs the FAFSA turned in by the end of the day on June 30, 2026. But you’ll notice that that’s after your kid will have been in school for a year, which doesn’t help you get money. So you need to focus on deadline number two.
2. The state you live in has its own deadline. Here’s the list. 
3. The colleges your kid is applying to have their own deadlines. Go to their financial aid office websites to find them. I highly recommend making a list of schools and FAFSA deadlines, because they can vary a lot and it’s easy to miss one. Plain and simple, if you miss one, you’ll miss out on the chance to get financial aid for that school. 

 Should you prioritize it over holiday stuff? Some financial aid is given out on a first-come, first-served basis, so yes—unless your kid is eyeballing my kid’s school, in which case, please, take your time while we get hers in first. 

Should your kid be filling it out, or you? While I’d love for this to be one of those things our kids have to learn to do without us, it’s not. If they’re your dependent, then you have to be heavily involved. 

Unusual family circumstances? If you’re a student with an unusual situation that basically leaves you without any parental support, you can still fill out the FAFSA. Here’s a list of example situations and what you’ll need to do.

The process starts here, and the whole thing will take about an hour. 

And if you’re a returning family—in other words, your kid is already in college and you’re simply updating your info, it’ll take even less time. Skip to step three below. 

Step one is to gather the following things:

• Recent tax returns (for the 2025-2026 FAFSA, you’ll need your 2023 returns)
• Records of any child support received
• The current balances of your bank accounts—savings and checking both
• Your net worth of investments, businesses, and farms (figure out your net worth here)
• Your Social Security number, if you have one
• Your birthdate
• Your address
• Your preferred email address

Step two is for everyone involved to create a StudentAid.gov account. Here’s where to make one.

“Everyone involved” includes:

1. The student
2. If the student is under 24 years old and is unmarried, then at least one parent needs an account. Find out who counts as a parent here. 
   • If the student is over 24, the parent does not need an account. 
   • If the student is under 24 but is married, the parent does not need an account.
3. If the student is married, and they do not file taxes jointly with their spouse, then their spouse needs an account. 

Creating this account takes less than 10 minutes. You’ll need your exact legal name, your birthdate, your email address, and your Social Security number, if you have one. (Don’t have one? The form has a link that says, “What if I don’t have a SSN?” Click that.)

Doing all of this results in you being assigned an “FSA ID.” You’ll use that later.

Pro tip: Take a screenshot of everything you enter on the “Personal Information” page, because you’ll need to use it again later and it has to match perfectly. We’re talking perfectly, down to “Road” vs. “Rd.”

Once you have your StudentAid.gov account, you can use it to immediately get into the FAFSA. The prompt will be right there on the StudentAid.gov site. 

Step three: Fill out the FAFSA together. You’ll start by being asked to enter information about your family, such as citizenship and your legal residence. 

Students will be asked to list between 1-20 schools they’re planning to apply to (or already have). Note that after you’ve submitted the FAFSA, you can continue to add or remove schools from the list. 

Then you’ll add your financial information. For the 2025-2026 FAFSA, you’ll need your 2023 tax returns. You’ll also need to disclose other forms of income, if you have any. Families with an annual adjusted gross income of $60,000 or higher will be asked to enter information about child support payments. If you use Medicaid or SNAP, you’ll fill out that information, too. 

Finally, you’ll have to sign the FAFSA and submit it. You can do that right on the website where you filled it out, or by printing out a paper copy and sending it by mail. 

Then What Happens?

The student will receive a FAFSA Submission Summary by email (or postal mail, if you selected that option on the FAFSA). It’ll include a record of all your FAFSA answers, and it’ll also have the very important Student Aid Index. 

The Student Aid Index (SAI) uses the information you entered on the FAFSA to figure out how much aid the student probably needs to help pay for school. 

It considers your family’s financial resources—the student’s, the parents’, or the student’s spouse—and deducts the minimum amount needed for your family’s annual expenses. It assumes that whatever is left may be used to pay for college.

The SAI number ranges between -1500 and 999999. The lower your SAI, the higher your likelihood of qualifying for aid. 

The FAFSA Submission Summary is not a financial aid offer, and you shouldn’t expect to get a certain amount of aid simply because you get a particular SAI number. That’s true for several reasons, but one of the biggest is that some states have special scholarships that help many students pay for college, no matter their financial circumstances. Some schools, too, have financial aid programs that consider more than just the SAI number. Eligibility also depends on the student’s year in school, their enrollment status, and the cost of attendance at the school(s) in question. Here’s more information about how student need and the amount of aid offered are determined. 

Colleges will send students financial aid package offers after they accept the student for enrollment. That doesn’t mean the student is locked in—students can consider offers from multiple colleges before making their decision about where to go to school. 

Questions You Might Have

How does the FAFSA work? After you submit your information on the FAFSA, the Department of Education (DOE) computes how much aid (money you don’t have to pay back, plus federal student loans, which you do) your student is eligible for to help them pay for college. 

Then, the DOE forwards that information to state agencies (which often have scholarships and aid to award, as well) and the colleges you’ve selected during the FAFSA process. If your student gets accepted to one of those colleges, that college will use the FAFSA information to offer your student a package of aid, made up of:

1. “free money” (grants, government scholarships, and college scholarships), 
2. federal student loans (student loans the government offers), and
3. work-study aid (this is when the federal government partners with certain employers to pay student workers who need additional aid). 

Your kid can decline any portion of the package. Likewise, your kid can still get additional scholarships to help pay for school, such as those they might apply for through your local community foundation or special interest groups (like sports teams, environmental groups, or your church). 

How can I be sure it’s on track? You can easily check the status of your FAFSA form at any point in the process. Here’s how to do it.

What if things have changed for our family since we filed our 2023 taxes? Maybe you’ve lost a job or added pay since then—no problem. Fill out the FAFSA, submit it, then contact the financial aid office of the schools the student is applying to to let them know how your family’s financial situation has changed since 2023. 

Good News About Filling Out the FAFSA

Because we went through the wringer last year, the DOE has worked hard to make the FAFSA easier and better this year. Already, over 650,000 more applicants are eligible for Pell Grants compared to 2023-2024, according to the US Secretary of Education, and the 2025-2026 FAFSA has only recently launched. We should see huge improvements for student aid by the time this cycle is through.

Also, the DOE’s help centers now have about twice as many agents as last year, so you shouldn’t have to wait more than two minutes if you call, email, or chat with them for help.

Handy Helpers

Get help creating your StudentAid.gov account

Federal Student Aid YouTube Channel: Tons of great videos, from how to complete certain sections of the FAFSA to what you should understand about student loans. 

Hot tips on the FAFSA: This government website better defines terms on the FAFSA (like “direct unsubsidized loan”), and will walk you through how to correct a mistake on the form.  

Estimate how much aid you’ll get: If you’ve got between 5-10 minutes and your family’s financial information, you can do a quick estimate of how much federal student aid your kid will be awarded. It’s not a perfect science, but if you’re paralyzed by the fear of paying for college, starting here could help you see things in more realistic terms. 

Frequently Asked Questions: Go here to learn more about everything from listing colleges on your FAFSA to changes in marital status that may impact your family’s information. 

Know what the pros know: This Financial Aid Toolkit is for counselors, college application mentors, and others who are helping students apply to college. 

Help the way you want it: I love this new way to get information from the DOE. It’s essentially three drop-down menus, and you pick one or more options from each:

1. “I’m looking for…” (an infographic, video, webinar, guide, glossary, etc.)
2. “To help…” (parents, students, non-citizens, high school counselors, etc.)
3. “Learn about…” (types of aid, filling out the FAFSA, receiving aid, etc.). 

Then the site spits out the exact, specific content you asked for in the way you asked for it. For example, I chose:

And received this useful infographic: