Ed.gov Homeroom

APRIL 17, 2025

By: James Bergeron, Deputy Under Secretary and Acting Federal Student Aid Chief Operating Officer Each year, more than 17 million students complete and submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form, unlocking access to more than $120 billion in federal student aid and billions more in school, state, and private funding.

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Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

MARCH 19, 2025

Educational accessibility is largely a policy choice and all of us must continue to advocate for greater accessibility of postsecondary education for all. Financial aid is tailored to individual students financial-need as assessed by the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

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College Aid Services

JANUARY 17, 2025

The guidance includes application instructions for institutions, encouraging them to assist students by sharing FAFSA data with state agencies with prior consent.

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Access Accessibility Instruction FAFSA 101

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

The FAFSA Simplification Act, scheduled to go into effect this year, will cut the number of questions on the notoriously difficult application for federal aid—which is also used in calculations for state and institutional awards—from 108 to 36 for most students. Weiner, president of Assumption. Dr. Gregory S.

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Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Department of Education (ED) has updated how it calculates the amount of aid students will receive to be in full alignment with the FAFSA Simplification Act. Cardona said the update, the latest in ED’s 2024–25 Better FAFSA ® implementation, will not impact implementation timelines. Since the new 2024–25 FAFSA form became available Dec.

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Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

APRIL 4, 2024

Amid ongoing issues with the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form this year, the City University of New York (CUNY) is looking to help. FAST will begin April 12 and continue until the end of this September, a CUNY spokesperson said in an email. to be able to be walked through it. I think there’s a lot of merit in that.”

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Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

OCTOBER 27, 2024

Digging into the FAFSA is a start because it asks students about dependents. The research suggests that access to affordable child care can improve persistence and graduation for students raising children. To bolster their support of student-parents, institutions should start by counting them.

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College Aid Services

DECEMBER 2, 2024

Financial aid offices can access the 2025-26 FAFSA Paper form through the FAFSA Partner Portal, as the Department of Education begins processing applications; functionality for student corrections will arrive in early 2025.

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Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

OCTOBER 6, 2024

These students also often lack access to adequate college counseling, making it more difficult to navigate the complex higher education landscape. This unequal start in education restricts their access to higher education and, by extension, the economic mobility that higher education traditionally provides.

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Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

MARCH 3, 2025

Last year, more than 70% of the graduating seniors in our high schools completed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, and a Victor Valley application, and 40% enrolled. These efforts signal to students that we care about their success even before they set foot on our campus.

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Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

MARCH 2, 2023

When the FAFSA Simplification Act begins to take effect this July, it’s expected to significantly affect the process of applying for financial aid, making the paperwork less complex and altering the formula for eligibility. However, there has been scant information on the specific impacts at a national level.

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College Aid Services

OCTOBER 29, 2024

Financial aid offices now have access to the 2025–26 FAFSA Preview Presentation, which provides stakeholders with tools for financial aid nights and staff trainings. This resource has over 300 slides, reviews 12 different aspects of the FAFSA, and is available as a PowerPoint presentation as well as a PDF file.

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College Aid Services

OCTOBER 28, 2024

Below is a summary of the most important changes that financial aid offices can expect in COD and the FAFSA Partner Portal… More » Common Record XML Schema Version 5.0c Launches as CPS and FAA Access Are Decommissioned The post Common Record XML Schema Version 5.0c

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College Aid Services

AUGUST 20, 2024

Administrators now have access to several new resources that focus on making corrections in the FAFSA Partner Portal (FPP) now that it will replace FAA Access to CPS Online.

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Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

JANUARY 30, 2024

million Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA ® ) forms have been successfully submitted since the 2024-25 redesigned application went live Dec. The data come a few weeks after ED announced more than one million FAFSA forms had been submitted and the form were accessible 24/7. More than 3.1 Department of Education.

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Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

MAY 2, 2024

Casualties of the ongoing FAFSA debacle continue to stack up, even as Federal Student Aid Director Richard Cordray leaves the situation behind. We needn’t act like if college counselors and advocates don’t throw their summer plans aside to help every student access a university, all those college dreams must disappear. While the U.S.

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CFAA College Financial Aid Advisors

DECEMBER 9, 2024

For students preparing to apply for financial aid, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is a crucial part of the process. With recent changes to the FAFSA process, it’s important to stay informed about whats going on. Heres a breakdown of the top 5 changes to the FAFSA this year that you should know about: 1.

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College Aid Services

MAY 1, 2024

Users without a Social Security Number (SSN) will have access to the 2024-25 FAFSA thanks to a series of changes that the Department has recently implemented to address the ongoing issues for this population.

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Counselors' Corner

JANUARY 7, 2025

If I had done so last year, I would have predicted a FAFSA nightmare, an election that would take our breaths away, and a very different landscape for college athletes. Early trials suggest were in for a much better, maybe normal, year of FAFSA. What could happen is the weakening of ED by shipping key programs (FAFSA?)

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Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

SEPTEMBER 19, 2024

That's the findings from a new report , released by researchers at the Higher Education, Race, and the Economy (HERE) Lab at the University of California, Merced, in cooperation with The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS). If the FAFSA-reported wealth threshold was set at a low of $500, 2.8

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Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

The most prominent example is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), a 108-question monster that the government has promised to simplify, although efforts have been delayed. The focus then shifts to the policy itself, the specific legislative requirements that student must fulfill to access benefits. said Gándara. “Or

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College Aid Services

JANUARY 10, 2024

FSA announces that the 24-25 FAFSA will no longer be limited to specific time frames and families can access the form regularly as in previous years. Over one million applications have already been processed over the last few weeks since the FAFSA’s release and the Department encourages families to continue doing so.

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College Aid Services

AUGUST 30, 2024

Institutions now have access to the 2024-25 FAFSA Verification-IRS Return Transcript Matrix to compare data between a selected family’s tax data and the information submitted through the FAFSA application. The matrix is currently available as an excel document and is divided into five specific sections.

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Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

APRIL 26, 2024

Cordray’s office has also undergone scrutiny and criticism for its botched rollout of changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid , or FAFSA, which were supposed to simplify the application process and expand access to underserved students and their families.

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College Aid Services

JANUARY 9, 2024

The English and Spanish FAFSA Submission Summary are now available online as a training resource for financial aid professionals. To access the documents, click the PDF links at the bottom of the FSA press release below.

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College Aid Services

MARCH 19, 2024

On Friday March 15, Secretary Cardona sent a letter to College Presidents and Chancellors updating them on the FAFSA rollout. The letter included some recommendations for institutions, including to be prepare for the ISIRs, to extend decision dates and payment deadlines, and encourage returning students to apply for aid.

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College Aid Services

JANUARY 9, 2024

FSA is conducting another set of webinars designed to answer your most pressing questions about the new FAFSA application.

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College Aid Services

DECEMBER 8, 2023

The Department of Education reaffirms that student can no longer access incomplete FAFSA applications indefinitely. It is important that you remind students of this change which starts in the 24-25 academic year. What is the policy?

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Counselors' Corner

JANUARY 10, 2024

This came to mind on December 31st, the alleged day of the much-anticipated rollout of the new FAFSA. Yes, FAFSA was up on December 31 st , thus making the December deadline. However, its arrival came with a disclaimer—this was a “soft opening” of the new FAFSA. Not so with FAFSA. They just didn’t want my business.

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College Aid Services

SEPTEMBER 4, 2024

Administrators now have access to the 2025–26 FAFSA® prototype, which is a web-based design tool where users can explore certain aspects of the official application as the Department of Education improves it over time.

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College Aid Consulting Services

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

Your favorite student is adding schools after completing FAFSA. What is the best way to add additional colleges and universities after completing the FAFSA for the school? Filling out your FAFSA, especially for the first time, can be a confusing process. Find and select the option to “Make FAFSA Corrections.”

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College Aid Services

JANUARY 25, 2024

Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act in 2020 to overhaul the application process for federal aid and expand students’ access to grant funding with a new analysis formula. Some of the largest changes include: the Student Aid Index, modifications to the family size definition, and reforming policies for the Federal Pell Grant.

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College Aid Services

MARCH 13, 2024

As a follow-up to its March 4th announcement, the Department has provided a number of updates regarding ISIR transmissions, FAFSA Submission Summaries, and how institutions can access information through the Partner Portal.

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Counselors' Corner

MARCH 27, 2024

Last February 1st, 6 million students had filed a FAFSA. The December 31 “rollout” of FAFSA was really part Beta-test, part blackout, with the site up for a while, then dark for hours, like electricity in a developing nation. Apologies and claims of underfunding aside, the Department had three years to bring the new FAFSA online.

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Counselors' Corner

NOVEMBER 29, 2023

The old FAFSA had more questions than many income tax forms, and even though I was rooting for the updated version that consisted of two questions (“What’s the income of your household? You can imagine our, um, surprise when the weeks before Thanksgiving brought the announcement there’s a very good chance FAFSA will roll out December 31.

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FAFSA Financial aid Counseling Application 101

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

APRIL 20, 2023

Higher education leaders face an obligation to Kansas families to remove barriers to access and success and ensure that our system lives up to the ideal of equal opportunity for all. Although these actions are helpful, they have not moved the needle toward closing access and success gaps. Structural change is needed.

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College Aid Consulting Services

JANUARY 5, 2024

Here, we’ll dive into what interest in these schools could mean for students seeking financial aid and how working with a financial aid advisor on your FAFSA and/or CSS Profile could be your ticket to unlocking more funding opportunities. Negotiate Aid Offers: Learn the art of financial aid appeals to potentially secure more funding.

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