Jan. 28, 2009

Mark Kantrowitz, an expert on paying for college and founder of FinAid.org and FastWeb.com (a scholarship search site), replied this month to New York Times reader-submitted questions about the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The FAFSA is the single most important financial app to fill out because the federal government provides the overwhelming majority of all financial aid. The seven-part question and answer series ran on the Times’ Education blog called The Choice: Demystifying College Admissions and Aid.

For many high school seniors and their parents, January begins the season for tackling the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. While the FAFSA remains much easier to fill out than the CSS PROFILE (used to determine eligibility for institutional financial aid), it has nonetheless been regarded by some as unnecessarily cumbersome. The federal government has begun attempting to streamline this app with the availability of its new 2010-2011 FAFSA. A major manifestation of this simplification is the new 2010-2011 FAFSA on the Web Worksheet — provided to help students and parents prepare to fill out the FAFSA — which asks far fewer questions than before. It can be downloaded here for those who want to get a head-start on the FAFSA:

http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/before012.htm

A good number of the financial aid questions Kantrowitz answers are very specific. Moreover, he has incorporated the latest information, including the impact of federal legislation passed as recently as December 2009. You can view all seven parts of Kantrowitz’s comprehensive and insightful answers on tips on filling out the FAFSA, CSS PROFILE, and general financial aid questions at:

http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/fafsaq-and-a/