2018-19 FAFSA Application Is Now Open (Like it or Not)

By Uloop Staff on October 2, 2017

In news no one really wants to hear (but kinda needs to) the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for 2018-19 opened on Oct 1, marking the start of financial aid season.

For the second straight year, the application has opened in October, four months earlier than the previous date of January 1. You must fill out a FAFSA to get any of the money that is handed out in the form of grants, loans, and work-study awards.

The Department of Education claims that changes made to the online tool used to fill out the FAFSA will make it easier to complete the form, including an improvement to an IRS tool that pulls in tax return info, which was previously taken down over privacy concerns.

Speaking from experience, the whole online FAFSA thing could use some updating. Filling it out had us like:

via GIPHY

It’s also still unclear if submitting your FAFSA earlier will mean you will hear back from your school faster. Many schools haven’t decided if they will move up their notification deadlines.

But, like each new school year, there is some hope. If you get started early, the whole process might only be mildly painful.

And Money has put together some handy tips to ease the pain of the process, including:

Relax. The FAFSA process can be a headache, but it’s not impossible.

Students and their parents have heard so much about how daunting the form is, with its 100-plus questions.It’s true that the applications is long (some experts say needlessly long), and a few questions are tricky. But many of those questions don’t apply to the majority of applicants, so your family may be able to skip over them. And last year’s change—allowing families to use older tax information—means the form should be easier for most applicants to fill out, since they’ll have finalized tax returns to pull income information from. (In the past, when you were required to use more recent tax information, many families estimated their income, and then had to go back and update it after filing their taxes.)

Read the whole list here and GOOD LUCK!

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