Be aware of these changes for FAFSA filing season

October marks the beginning of FAFSA filing season, meaning high school seniors will need to get organized and hit deadlines if they expect to receive federal financial aid to attend college next fall.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid for the 2022-2023 college school year contains a handful of changes designed to simplify the filing process and make eligibility for aid easier. The more significant revisions in the form will occur starting with the 2024-2025 filing period under phased-in deadlines mandated in the FAFSA Simplification Act.

More than half of the nation’s approximately 3.8 million high school seniors typically fill out the FAFSA starting Oct. 1 each year to obtain financial aid, including grants, loans and work-study jobs.

But those numbers have been shrinking, especially since the pandemic took hold in spring 2020 and many students opted to postpone going to college. In addition, many families also don’t bother applying, mistakenly figuring they’ll be ineligible to receive aid or they are confused by all the paperwork.

To encourage more students to file the FAFSA, the U.S. Department of Education in recent years has eliminated some of the detailed questions that will significantly shorten the form — available online at www. fafsa.gov, or through the MyStudentAid mobile app.

Here’s how the FAFSA simplification will affect students who file the 2022-2023 financial aid documents starting this fall:

Male applicants no longer must register with the Selective Service System to receive federal student aid. To clarify, they’re still required to register with Selective Service, but failure to register for the draft no longer causes them to lose eligibility for federal student aid, said David Ressner, a financial adviser with Buckingham Strategic Wealth in St. Louis.

Drug convictions will no longer have the negative consequences to aid eligibility that they once did.

Don’t be confused when you see the drug conviction and Selective Service questions still on the new FAFSA. Ressner said that’s because it was too late to make the wording changes in the form. The bottom line is that failing to register or having a drug conviction will no longer affect eligibility for federal student aid.

A complicated concept known as SULA, or the Subsidized Usage Limit Applies requirement, has been repealed. Generally speaking, it involved the lifetime limit on subsidized direct student loans.

While the FAFSA can be confusing and time consuming for first-time filers, the Department of Education still urges parents and students to work through the document and avoid paying a private company to do the work for you.

Check the Department of Education’s FAFSA website now to determine what documents you’ll need for filing, and apply for an ID, which makes it easier to access your account online or through the mobile app.

Remember, it doesn’t cost anything to file the FAFSA through the federal government. It’s a process, but one that should be getting easier.