Education Articles from College Matching Service

You read it right, finally the Department of Education is shortening the fafsa online application.

The current fafsa online application is 30 “screens” long, it will now be 10 “screens” long. This is great news for anyone who needs to fill out the fafsa application.

It isn’t just the online fafsa application that is getting shorter.

The fafsa application will also become shorter.

Furthermore, the fafsa application will also be less confusing. For example:

At any time… did your high school or school district homeless liaison determine that you were an unaccompanied youth who was homeless?

Will now become:

Are you homeless?

Part of the difficulty of the Fafsa is the tax information it requests. Unless it is April 16th, you probably can’t remember anything specific about your tax return. So you then have to go and find your tax return and fill out the Fafsa. Then you have to provide information on your parents tax return, so then you have to wait for them and fill that out as well.

However, starting in January, you will be able to automatically download your tax return information from the IRS right into the fafsa application. How amazing would that be?