Pro Tips for the 2024–25 FAFSA® Form
Use these tips to help you successfully complete the 2024–25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form.
Tips for Preparing To Fill Out the FAFSA® Form
Get a StudentAid.gov account before filling out the FAFSA® form.
Before starting the FAFSA form, you’ll need to create a StudentAid.gov account to access and fill out the 2024–25 form.
Your contributors will each need their own StudentAid.gov account too, which should also be created before they enter the FAFSA form. “Contributor” is a new term on the 2024–25 FAFSA form—it refers to anyone (you, your spouse, your biological or adoptive parent, or your parent’s spouse) required to provide information on your FAFSA form.
As a student, you’ll be required to enter your Social Security number (SSN) to create a StudentAid.gov account unless you’re a citizen of the Freely Associated States. However, beginning with the 2024–25 FAFSA form, your contributors who don’t have an SSN can create a StudentAid.gov account to complete their section of your FAFSA form.
If a contributor has an SSN, you’re required to provide this number when inviting them to contribute to your FAFSA form. Do not indicate that a contributor doesn’t have an SSN simply because you don’t know that number. If they do in fact have an SSN, indicating that they don’t will cause delays when they try to create an account and contribute the required information on your form.
Have your documents ready.
Be prepared so you can complete your form in one session. You might need the following documents as you fill out the 2024–25 form:
- 2022 Tax returns*
- Records of child support received
- Current balances of cash, savings, and checking accounts
- Net worth of investments, businesses, and farms
*Starting with 2024–25 form, you'll be able to provide consent and approval to have most of your financial information imported directly from the IRS, but you should keep your tax return handy for additional questions.
If you gather these things in advance, you’ll be able to complete and submit your form quickly. Any contributors you invite to your form will need to provide the same information for themselves.
Have your contributor information ready.
To invite contributors to your FAFSA form, you’ll be asked to provide their
- first and last name,
- SSN (if they have one),
- date of birth, and
- email address (or mailing address, if they don’t have an SSN).
To avoid issues with your FAFSA form, list contributor information exactly as it appears on their Social Security card or legal identification card. Avoid using numbers or extra spaces when entering their name. If the contributor has a suffix in their name (e.g., John Paul Jr., or John Paul III), leave that out of the invitation. Also, if they have a StudentAid.gov account, make sure the personal information you enter exactly matches the information they provided when creating their account.
When you fill out the FAFSA form, you’ll answer questions that will determine who needs to be a contributor on your form. However, you may be able to identify your contributors now to get a head start on collecting the information you’ll need to invite them to your form.
To find out if your parent(s) will be a contributor on your FAFSA form, check out the Is My Parent a Contributor When I Fill Out My FAFSA® Form? infographic on www.studentaid.gov.
Tips for Filling Out the FAFSA® Form
You (the student) should complete your section of the form first.
We strongly recommend that you (the student) start the form and complete your section first to save time and prevent errors.
When you fill out the student section, you’ll answer questions to determine your dependency status and if anyone else, such as your parent(s), must contribute to your form. If you don’t start the form first, or if you and your contributors are working in your form at the same time, your contributors may have more difficulty completing their section or may even spend time providing information that’s not required.
Starting the form first will also prevent data entry mistakes, such as your parent accidentally entering their own information when they should be entering yours. Once you’ve completed your section, be sure to send invitations to all contributors to your form before saving and exiting.
Read questions and definitions carefully.
There’ve been major updates to the FAFSA form for the 2024–25 award year, and many questions and definitions have changed. When filling out your form, read each question and definition carefully.
Here are some terms that are new or have newly updated definitions for the 2024–25 form:
Dependent vs. Independent
- If you’re a dependent student, you will report your and your parent’s information.
- If you’re an independent student, you will report your own information (and, if you’re married, your spouse’s).
- If you or your parent attempt to report parent information that isn’t required on your FAFSA form, it could create confusion or errors. Before you complete your form, learn more about dependency status. And be sure that you—the student—fill in your section of the form first.
Parent
The FAFSA form has specific guidelines about which parent’s information to report. Spoiler alert: It has nothing to do with who claims you on their taxes. You can use this guide to help you figure out which parent to report on the FAFSA form.
Number of Family Members (Family Size)
The FAFSA form has requirements for how you should determine your family size. Read the instructions carefully. Many students incorrectly report this number, especially when the student doesn’t physically live with their parent.
Unusual Circumstances
This is a terminology change on the 2024–25 FAFSA form. It refers to situations that may prevent a dependent student from obtaining parent information on their FAFSA form because they either cannot contact their parent or contacting the parent poses a risk to the student. In situations such as the ones below, you (the student) may be able to submit your FAFSA form without parent information despite being considered a dependent student:
- You or your parent are incarcerated.
- You have left home due to an abusive or threatening environment.
- You have been abandoned by or estranged from your parents and have not been adopted.
- You were granted refugee or asylee status and are separated from your parents, or your parents are displaced in a foreign country.
- You are a victim of human trafficking.
- You are otherwise unable to contact or locate your parents and have not been adopted.
Direct Unsubsidized Loan Only
While this isn’t a new question, the flow of the 2024–25 form is a little different if you are a student whose parents are unwilling to provide their information, but don’t have an unusual circumstance (such as those listed above). Most dependent students answer “No” to the Direct Unsubsidized Loan question so that their parents can provide information on their form, and they (the student) can be considered for all types of federal student aid, including Federal Pell Grants.
You should know that if you answer “Yes” to this question, your eligibility for federal student aid won’t be calculated, and you may not be eligible for most types of federal student aid (including Direct Subsidized Loans, federal grants, and federal work-study). After submitting your FAFSA form, a financial aid administrator at your college or career/trade school will need to review your situation to determine if you are eligible to receive a limited amount of Direct Unsubsidized Loan.
Net Worth of Investments
We’ve outlined some specific items that should and shouldn’t be included as investments on the FAFSA form. For example, a college savings plan like a 529 account is considered an investment, while the value of the home in which you reside and the value of your retirement accounts are not. Find more info about figuring out the net worth of your investments.
Net Worth of Businesses and Investment Farms
Due to changes in the law, students and families must now report the net worth of businesses and investment farms, even if the business is small in nature (i.e., a family-owned business) or the family lives full-time on a portion of the farm the family owns. Learn more about how to report the net worth of these types of assets on your FAFSA form.
Consult in-form resources if you need help.
Use the help text and help articles (accessible via the question mark icon) embedded in the form if you’re not sure how to answer a question. Changing your answers to questions that impact your eligibility for aid may create errors in the form. If you change your answer to any of the following questions, you may need to delete your form and start over to fix the error.
- Marital Status – Options are single (never married), Married (not separated), Remarried, Separated, Divorced, and Widowed. Select your status as of the day the FAFSA form is completed.
- Citizenship – Options are U.S. citizen or national; Eligible noncitizen; and Neither U.S. citizen nor eligible noncitizen. Eligible noncitizens include U.S. nationals (such as natives of American Samoa or Swains Island) and permanent residents. If you indicate you are an eligible noncitizen, you will likely have an A-Number assigned to you, and you will need to provide this number on your form.
- State of Legal Residence – This is typically the state where your permanent address is located. However, each state determines legal residency differently, and you may not be considered a resident of the state if you haven’t lived there for at least five years. You should contact your college’s or career/trade school’s financial aid office for assistance with this question.
Don’t forget to review, sign, and submit the form!
Review your answers prior to submission.
Protect against form glitches or typos by reviewing all of your answers prior to submission. You can review all of the answers you provided in your section on the review page, which you’ll see before you provide your signature. You can view all of the responses by selecting “Expand All” or expand each section individually. To edit a response, select the question’s hyperlink.
Monitor your form’s status, and don’t forget to submit the FAFSA form after all of your contributors have signed and all sections are completed.
If you’ve been notified that all of your contributors have signed and completed their sections, and your student section is also complete, you should check the sections of your form to ensure that all questions are answered.
Log in to StudentAid.gov using your account username and password.
Navigate to your account Dashboard.
Select “2024–25 FAFSA Form” from the “My Activity” page.
Once you’ve accessed your form, review the information submitted in each section.
If all sections are complete and all of your contributors have signed, follow the prompts to submit your form.
Once your application is submitted, you can view all of the information entered on your form, along with a summary of who contributed to your form, on the Summary page (accessed from the “My Activity” page of the account Dashboard).
Remember that if you make a mistake, you can correct it in the first half of March.
If you make a mistake when submitting your FAFSA form—for instance, if you submit your form without required contributor information or without your signature—don't worry. You’ll be able to correct the error as soon as your form is processed in the first half of March. Learn about how to make FAFSA corrections.
Not sure if your form has been processed? We'll send you an email once it is, but you can also check the status of your form yourself:
Log in using your studentaid.gov account with your username and password.
Navigate to your account Dashboard.
Select “2024–25 FAFSA Form” from the “My Activity” page.
