What Is The FAFSA: The Free Application For Federal Student Aid is an application for federal student aid such as federal grants, work-study funds and loans. With the FAFSA, students receive financial aid to four-year universities and trade schools. Many states also use your FAFSA information to determine your eligibility for state and school aid.

Why it Matters: The Department of Education (DOE) launched the newly redesigned FAFSA on Dec. 31, 2023. The DOE indicated they would first institute a soft-launch period. The soft-launch includes planned outages to maintain the site, allowing for updates creating a better user experience.

– Some of the benefits of the new model include “A better user experience for the FAFSA, expanded eligibility for federal student aid, and reduced barriers for certain student populations (e.g., homeless and unaccompanied youth, incarcerated students, English language learners, and students from low-income backgrounds),” according to the University of Denver.

– Already though, students and contributors are seeing issues with this new FAFSA model. According to U.S News and World Report, the new FAFSA model has seen multiple problems such as inaccurate displays of school names, multiple campuses showing in place of one school, and an inability of parents without Social Security numbers to contribute to the application.

What now: The federal deadline to submit the 2024–25 FAFSA form will be June 30, 2025. Students should voice any concerns regarding the new FAFSA updates by calling the Federal Student Aid information center at 1-800-433-3243.