FAQ Category: Financial Aid

If the student cannot answer Yes to at least one question in the Student Status Step of the FAFSA, the student will not be able to complete the online FAFSA without providing his or her parents’ financial information. If the student does not have contact with his or her parents, the student needs to speak…

The student must fill out the FAFSA accurately and completely to the best of his or her knowledge as of the date the student is completing it. If the student and his or her family have unusual circumstances that the student believes are not adequately reflected on the FAFSA (for example, medical bills or unemployment),…

If the student is separated, divorced, or widowed, he or she may have filed a joint tax return. However, for the tax questions on the FAFSA, even if the student filed a joint return, the student should separate his or her tax information from the student’s spouse’s tax information, as if the student filed a…

If the student will not file a tax return, the student should answer “Will Not File”. The student will then be taken to income earned from work, where he or she should enter any monies earned from a job that is listed as taxed on a W-2 form. The student should then answer only those…

Electronic filing is faster than filing a paper FAFSA. The process may be as much as 7-14 days faster if the student uses a PIN to electronically sign the application as soon as he or she completes it. Submitting the FAFSA using the Web eliminates delays that can occur from mailing. Also, FAFSA on the…

The FSA ID is a code that students and parents can use to: The FSA ID is similar to the PIN used to access a bank account. To protect the privacy of the information the student is submitting, the student (and parent) must keep his or her FSA ID a secret. If the student is a dependent student,…

Yes. The student’s application is safe on the Internet. FAFSA on the Web, in conjunction with your supported browser, uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol to establish a secure session between your browser and the FAFSA on the Web server. All information passed by you to the FAFSA on the Web server will be scrambled…

To be eligible to receive federal student aid, the student must meet certain requirements. The student must be: