It's FAFSA time again!

Some quick links and updates about FAFSA
Not only is it the start of the New Year, January 1 also marks the first day college-bound students and their parents can fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for the 2012-2013 academic year. FAFSA is a standardized application used to determine eligibility for government financial aid. The FAFSA form has seen a simplification in the past years and now has fewer questions to answer and a online process, allowing students and their parents to fill out the application with greater ease.

The "FAFSA Updates” section of the Federal Student Aid Information for Counselors site at www.fsa4counselors.ed.gov/clcf/FAFSAUpdates.html includes links to the FAFSA application, the Worksheet, the PDF FAFSA, the demonstration site (great for your financial aid info sessions!), the EFC formula guide, and more. Most 2012-13 FAFSA items are now final and have “gone live” online.

*NEW!* On the home page of the counselors site at www.fsa4counselors.ed.gov, under “What’s New,” we’ve recently introduced a section called “In Other News…” This is where we share useful information that isn’t quite urgent enough to warrant its own headline in “What’s New.” Check it out – and keep an eye on that area in future. (I’d love to get an RSS feed or Twitter feed so you could subscribe and then get those announcements automatically, but we’re not quite there yet. Meanwhile, if you have a preference for one of those options, or a better suggestion, feel free to contact me via e-mail.)

Completing the FAFSA at www.studentaid.ed.gov/completefafsa includes information about every question on the FAFSA. Here’s where you find those arcane bits of knowledge you’ve been seeking…

“Finding Money for College” at www.fsa4counselors.ed.gov/clcf/PlanningAFinancialAidNight.html is a PowerPoint presentation that introduces the basic concepts of financial aid. It is particularly useful for you to present to juniors or younger students who don’t need much detail yet. Yep, the presentation has been updated for 2012-13 (and the Spanish version should follow within a couple of weeks).

The  2012-13 Counselors and Mentors Handbook at www.fsa4counselors.ed.gov has updates about financial aid (look for the “NEW” symbols) and lots of fact sheets at the back that you can distribute to your students. (Due to our severely reduced print budget, the Counselors Handbook is no longer printed, so you’ll need to download the PDF.) Note that the current PDF is labeled “DRAFT.” That’s because our Office of Communications and Outreach has not finished proofreading it; so you might find a typo or two. However, the information in the book was fact checked, so there shouldn’t be any problems as far as accuracy goes.

The Federal Student Aid Publications Ordering System, or FSAPubs, allows nonprofit entities such as schools and libraries order bulk quantities of our free financial aid publications (to learn about FSAPubs, visit www.fsa4counselors.ed.gov/clcf/freepublicationsmailinglist.html ).
The Federal Student Aid Information Center at 1-800-4-FED-AID (remember, they can answer your questions as well as your students’)