That'll be nice. I filled one out in February for the first time in near a decade, and it's a bit of a mess.

THANK YOU GOD!!!!!!!!

love the federal financial aid but that fafsa is just insane.

Figures. This past spring I filled out my final one for my undergraduate degree.

I remembered having to fill these out during my undergrad years.

The next step is to find a way to remove that expected parental contribution when your parents are making you pay for 100% of your tuition and books. That screwed me over in terms of having to take out unsubsidized loans. Although, I see the potential for abuse if the let people do that.

I never had a problem with the FAFSA, but perhaps I'm in the minority. The renewal FAFSAs were nice and easy because they imported all the information from the year before, and it was SUPER easy for grad school because I didn't need to fill out info for the parental units.

And no, the FAFSA isn't the worst fin aid form ever....the CSS/Profile is like a million times worse and longer. But you need to fill that one out if you want any private institutional aid...

too bad..I loved spending those hours filling in the numbers and answering endless questions, only to be told I am expected to contribute $59,000 to *each* of my three kids' education.
I *gotta* be doin somethin wrong..

At least they do have a feature (not easy to find) that allows you to transfer financial info from one application to another.

Just in time for hubby to be all gradudated from grad schoolin.

Ah well, in a couple decades it'll be nice that it's simple for the chitlins.

Good news for when I do this again in February.

I've seen worse forms than the FAFSA. I've seen job applications that look like they're written by someone who can't read. At least with an online form you don't have the problem of a form that doesn't give you enough space to fill in the answers.

this would be a great and much needed change, but honestly i think the pain and length of filling it out is not as bad as everyone makes it out to be... it took me like 25 minutes to get 11000 last year... free.

kthx taxpayers <3

***however, i would hope the parents had to authorize the release of their tax info.... i understand some parents are well, horrible and uncaring, but is a matter of privacy.

But will this help out when a parent does not file their taxes in time for the FAFSA deadlines? My mother always gets a tax return so sometimes she waits years before doing the taxwork, and obviously this doesn't work for getting the FAFSA in.

@Rectilinear Propagation:
Try filling out the SF-86. It asks for pretty much everything about your life, vacations, parents, step parents and their ties to foreign governments and on and on. All for just a simple helpdesk job.

I was getting tired of having to give a baby to the Sidhe to get the FAFSA completed, then being forced to document that baby.

"For example, the question, "At any time... did your high school or school district homeless liaison determine that you were an unaccompanied youth who was homeless?" will instead be, "Are you homeless?""

The first question no one can probably say yes to. But "Are you homeless?" can be answered as "Hell yea, I don't own a home, I am 18." i.e. "Yes"

@Jesse:

Yeah, same here. Just because my parents have a (somewhat) large combined income doesn't mean they are giving me one red cent.

@D0rk: Likewise. I did my last one on Monday. Ah well, being a well out of high school grad student and on my own (well with a family in tow), I got to skip a lot of the questions.

I have no intention of continuing. Back! Back I say to thee foul professor who wants me to be thy doctoral lackey. Get your own coffee!

GODDAMMIT. Figures they change it AFTER I graduate. Never fails.

@sponica: no kidding. filling it out for grad school was much much much easier than plying my dad into sitting down at a computer to answer about his income for undergrad.

This form is just a waste of time anyway. It is a federal form and therefore skews agains those of us who live in areas where the cost of housing is so much higher.

Because my family's income in other parts of the country would make us VERY comfortable, here on LI, where taxes and housing costs are higher, not so much.

BTW, I never found this form that difficult to do....
a waste of time, because it would cheerfully announce that our EFC was around 30k!

@Jesse:

You actually can. In fact, all you need is a letter from your parents saying that they refuse to fund you, and you can get an increase in your loans. That's a crummy situation, though. I'll never forget or be able to repay my parents for all they've done for me.

You forgot to mention "And less financially useful."

@Rectilinear Propagation: At least with an online form you don't have the problem of a form that doesn't give you enough space to fill in the answers.

You've obviously not used many poorly written web forms. That's one of the first things I test in a UI, and it's not uncommon for them to have maxlength values that aren't long enough for common values.

@lemonchar: especially considering my taxes are filed by feb 2 and my mom gets around to it mid to late march....

That's change I can believe in!

Oh, my husband is gonna LOVE this! Yay.

@samchristian: you're SOL if you're under 25 (and pursuing your first degree) and your parents don't want to fill out the paperwork....you have to jump through hoops to be declared an independent student.

@celticgina:

I totally agree about the cost-of-living disparities skewing the FAFSA results. We live in a New England metro area where housing costs a small fortune, plus we have to pay flood insurance even though there hasn't been a flood on our street in more than 100 years. So it's very expensive. But we're being compared to people with similar incomes in, say, the Midwest where housing is half or less the cost of ours. Annoyingggg! Still, we have filled it out and qualified for some aid, and in another year it will be better because we'll have two in college.

Now if only this and the new Student Loan laws went into effect in 2005 when I was a freshman and not 2009-2010 when I am a senior and have $100k in loans, this may have helped.

@Joshua Davis: Tell your mom that she's essentially stealing money out of your pocket. Harsh but true. With stuff like this, her personal peculiarities* are now bigger than herself.
Good luck!
* Don't get me wrong: we all have 'em.

@wgrune: Hey, yeah! Let other people foot the bill for your education.

@ShachiAssaracus:

What?

@Jesse: That's what happened to me...my father made well over six figures but did not contribute one penny to my education, health, or well being after I turned 18. That's why it still stings that I got burned because the gov't took it for granted that I had a loving father active in my life and supportive with my education...which he most certainly was NOT.

I've always procrastinated in filling them out because of the length of the forms. It was actually easier filling one out for this upcoming Fall semester.

I have never found it all that difficult anyway but it being shorter will be nice. I am also a single, independent student, so no I am not filling it out with my info and parental info.

If you can't figure out a FAFSA, you probably shouldn't be admitted to college.

@sponica: i know, i've been there myself. it took me a year of nagging to get my mother to help. and it sucked. but again, taking anyone's info without their consent is fucked up. that's just how i feel about it. :)

My mum will be so thrilled. This is her least favorite part of the year. The only reason she would never pass this duty off to me is because my dad refused to send me the tax forms because I was too far away.

I'm still confused as to why there's been no mention of changing the requirement that FAFSA estimate your contribution based on both your income and your parents income until you're either 24 or married. I've just graduated college. My parents won't be contributing to my grad school education (and I don't think this is all that unusual). If I applied to grad school now, FAFSA would take into account my parent's income, regardless of the fact that they are not going to be contributing anything. If I wait 3 years (which I will) FAFSA will only take into account my income and most likely offer me more in aid. Sorry, but the gov has a long way to go before I pat them on the back for college aid.

I found the FAFSA annoying to fill out, as someone said earlier if you just import previous settings from the year before it does make it somewhat easier but sometimes things change, and even if it doesn't. It's still annoying.

@lmarconi: As soon as you apply, you can have your schools FA office update it to say you are a graduate student and none of your parents information will be factored in. Not that it matters, you're only going to be able to get loans.

@dahlink_natasha: @dahlink_natasha:
You can always work with your financial aid office to establish independence. It was a ton of paperwork and lots of work but I was able to show independence at 20.

@sponica: I found the FAFSA to be a piece of cake. As long as I had the school's code (which takes a minute to find if you don't have it), and an old tax form, it takes all of 5 minutes. Theh again, I actually take the time to print out the hard copy (like they STRONGLY suggest you do) and get all the info in advance instead of clicking through and hunting through my financial archive box for a single line of info.

Also, I second the comment below suggesting that if the FAFSA is too hard, college may be as well.

@samchristian: it's more that the Dept of Ed has this misguided notion that parents support their children in their educational journey...my step cousin has imaginary parents for the most part, and it took 2 years for his fin aid office to file the paperwork making him eligible to be considered as an independent student

@tjfraz1: but you should still benefit from the fixed rate federal loans....i know all my federal loans from grad school are fixed at 6.8% and I didn't go to grad school til fall of 2006

@lmarconi: it's only on the FIRST degree that you provide parental information. I didn't apply parental info on my FAFSA for grad school.

It's not difficult to complete as long as you have your pertinent tax info close by, but when you have to do it every year for each kid you have going to college... well, it is not fun. There always seem to be that one last screen that shows up. And then the next last one. We even have to fill it out for one of our kids that has a 4 year scholarship. Even though they're already getting the scholarship money, i guess they can get still more?

@Jabberkaty:

It will be complicated again by then.
That's how these things work. ;)

I filled it out myself all 4 years of college - just got my mums tax info from her first - and it never too me more than 10-15 minutes.

This is great news for me! I work for a non-profit that assists inner-city dropouts in obtaining their GED and then I transition them into the local community college. Each day, I fill out about 5 FAFSAs for my students. Often, my students (or their parents) have not gained the life skills yet that tell them to keep their tax forms once they've already spent their refund money. So, I have to call the IRS 1-800 number and have the tax transcripts sent.

I do hope these changes make it easier for students to become "indepedent" versus "dependent" in status. In my case, most of my students have absolutely relationship or contact with their parents and I have to jump through bureaucratic hoops for a status change.

@wgrune: I'm going to second that.

What?