New year, New FAFSA: College aid changes

(CNN) — Heads up, future and current college students: the new, free application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, arrived during holiday break, and there are a lot of changes.

The new FAFSA – which will determine federal aid eligibility for the 2024 to 2025 academic year – has reduced the number of questions for students, from as many as one-hundred and eight to as a few as eighteen.

The Department of Education revealed that some applicants can complete the form in less than ten minutes.

The revamp – approved by Congress in 2019 and 2020 – is a response to criticism that the previous process was too complicated, and simplifies applications in two major ways.

First, a tool connected with the IRS will allow all applicants to pull appropriate tax data from their parents’ most recent income tax filings, with their parent’s consent.

Karen McCarthy, VP of Public Policy and Federal Relations for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) added, “The student will go in and say yes, you can pull any information on file at the IRS for me and then the parent will also go in and do the same.”

Second, applicants can now skip questions skip questions that aren’t relevant to them.

The way aid is calculated has also been revised.

It is expected to boost the number of lower-income students eligible for federal Pell grants, which do not need to be repaid.

But, the new calculations eliminate the ‘sibling discount,’ where students who had a sibling enrolled in college were eligible for more aid/

Colleges will begin to receive applicant data in late-January, setting a tight clock for institutions that typically send aid award letters in March.

“They will be scrambling to get those turned around so that students and families have adequate amount of time so that they can consider all of their options and make their enrollment decision,” McCarthy explained.