FAFSA Website 2010-2011 Changes to Apply for Free Grants

FAFSA Pin Changes

• Social security numbers will no longer be displayed on the confirmation page after you put them in. (They're still required, though.) Instead, you will see a long PIN reference number which is the month, day, year, hour, minute, and second that the page was created. (No, you don't have to memorize it.)
• A virtual keyboard will be displayed where you enter your birth date and SSN#. Instead of typing them in, you will use your mouse.

These measures will make it harder for someone to use this information to login and access another person's application.

EFC Calculator Changes

Of course, if you actually provide your personal information, you can save time on your FAFSA application by getting a PIN through the FAFSA4caster and importing your financial data, also.

Other changes allow you to get an estimate of how much federal college financial aid you can get. Because this depends not only on your FAFSA EFC but also on your college costs, you have a choice about what figure to enter for your COA (cost of attendance) by:

1. using the national average (based on what type of school, housing, residency, program length)

or
2. entering your own estimated cost

You can also compare side-by-side, two financial aid estimates for different schools.

FAFSA Online Application Changes

- additional security:

• a virtual keyboard
• SSN's are masked and replaced by a different identifying code

- legislative changes:

• Cooperative Education Program (co-op) earnings are now excluded from income when calculating an EFC.
• Veteran's education benefits are no longer considered financial assistance when determining eligibility for aid. (The questions are still asked on the 2009-2010 form, but the answers will not be used for the determination; the questions will not be on the 2010-2011 form.)

- data-sharing requirements:

• There are plans to allow applicants to import their tax information from the IRS. The data will then be sorted into the correct places on the form. (No more confusion about FAFSA deferred compensation.)

  In order to do this, marital status now has 4 possible answers so that IRS info can be correctly applied. The choices are: single, married/remarried, separated, and divorced/widowed.

• A marital status date is now mandatory if anyone answers anything but "single".

- user friendliness:

• Questions will not be asked that do not apply to your circumstances (based on your prior answers).
• There is clearer identification of whether questions are directed at students or parents.
• If data is incomplete or conflicting, the user will be alerted before moving on.
• Instructions and help text is provided by clicking on a "?" icon.

This online form is a great improvement over the printable FAFSA application as far as ease of use.

FAFSA Corrections and Renew FAFSA

• marital status
• balance of cash, savings, and checking accounts
• net worth of investments
• net worth of businesses
• dislocated worker

To allow yourself enough time so that corrections will not be needed, check your state's FAFSA deadline.

When renewing on the FAFSA website, your form will be prefilled with dependency answers from last year except for ones that might be different because the year has changed.