Spooky season has finally arrived so that means it’s time for costumes, candy and binging every movie on Freeform’s 31 Nights of Halloween. However, if you’re a college student the spookiest of all tasks has also come back again and that is filling out your FAFSA.
Every year on Oct. 1 the Office of Federal Student Aid opens up the FAFSA, so students can collect more debt to pay for college.
If you are like me, then you will probably keep pushing off doing your FAFSA as the task can seem quite daunting. However, if you don’t want to be a stress ball of worry because you didn’t realize there was a priority deadline of Jan. 1 and it was March and you hadn’t even attempted to remember your FSA password, you probably want to pay attention to the steps below so you can fill out your FAFSA as soon as possible and get back to thinking about what character from Stranger Things you want to dress up as this year.
Anyways, step number one for completing you FAFSA is going to https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa. Once you get there, you must choose if you are new to the FAFSA process or a returning user.
If you are new, you will go step by step to creating an account. If you are a returning user, hopefully you remember your password, but if not, no big deal as you can click “forgot password” and make a new one.
After you get in, you can start your FAFSA form for 2020-2021. For those who have filled out the FAFSA before, the “Student Demographics, School Selection and Dependency Status” should have the same information you have used before. If needed, change information that is not relevant to you anymore.
Those who have not filled out the FAFSA before, click start new FAFSA and fill in the information as prompted.
After you have answered all the questions, you will need to sit down with your parents to fill out the “Parental Financials” portion. For the 2020-2021 form, your parents will need their tax information from 2018. To make this task simple, use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) by logging into your parent’s IRS account when prompted, as it will insert the necessary information for you.
If you cannot use the IRS DRT make sure to have your parent’s Social Security card, alien registration or permanent resident card, 2018 Tax return, 2018 W-2 form and other records of taxed or untaxed income, current bank statements and current investment records (such as businesses and farms, stocks, bonds, etc.). This information will need to be filled in manually.
When this is completed you will be asked to double check all your information. If all is correct, put in your electronic signature and hit submit.
Now you’re all done and you can go back to celebrating the spooky season.