The FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) for the 2024-2025 academic year is now open at www.studentaid.gov; however, the federal government is continuing to work on the form, and it is accessible for only short periods of time throughout the day.
Please note: The changes to the FAFSA do not affect aid for the spring 2024 semester. Aid for spring 2024 falls under the 2023-2024 FAFSA.
The delay in the 2024-2025 FAFSA is due to changes being made as a result of the FAFSA Simplification Act passed by the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Department of Education opened the new FAFSA as a “soft launch” and continues to make changes to the form to improve it.
The OLLU Office of Financial Aid will continue to monitor the situation and will share information with the university community as it becomes available from the federal government.
Financial aid awarding will also be delayed. The government has not provided a date of when universities will receive the FAFSA applicant data needed to build financial aid packages.
With the new simplified FAFSA, there will be changes to how students and family members complete the application:
Applicants will be required to use the IRS Direct Data Exchange Tool — all individuals listed on the FAFSA must provide consent for the U.S. Department of Education to receive tax information or confirmation of non-filing status directly from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This will allow automatic transfer of tax information into the application reducing time to complete the application and the number of questions to be answered.
All “contributors” must provide financial information on the FAFSA — “Contributor” is a new term being introduced on the 2024-2025 FAFSA. It is anyone who is required to provide information on a student’s FAFSA form (such as the student, parents, stepparents, spouse). Answers on the FAFSA will determine which contributors will be required to provide information.
Contributors will receive an email informing them that they’ve been identified as such and will need to log in using their own Federal Student Aid (FSA) ID (if they don’t already have one) to provide the required information on the student’s FAFSA.
Being a contributor does not mean a person is financially responsible for the student’s education costs, but it does mean the contributor must provide information on the FAFSA or the application will be incomplete and the student will not be eligible for federal student aid.
To learn more about FAFSA changes, visit the Frequently Asked Questions page on the OLLU website.