FAFSA Simplification Act

The 2024-2025 FAFSA is now available for students and families to file. Federal Student Aid may pause the site for maintenance and technical updates as needed.

The 2024–25 FAFSA form expands eligibility for federal student aid, including Pell Grants, and provides a streamlined user experience. 610,000 new students from low-income backgrounds will be eligible to receive Federal Pell Grants due to updates to student aid calculations. Plus, applicants will be able to skip as many as 26 questions, depending on their individual circumstances. Some applicants could answer as few as 18 questions, which could take less than 10 minutes.

When you submit your completed 2024–25 FAFSA form, you’ll get an email confirming that we received your form with preliminary information related to your eligibility for federal student aid. This will include your estimated Student Aid Index (SAI) and estimated eligibility for Federal Pell Grants.

The Department of Education will send FAFSA data to schools beginning mid-March. Students will be able to make corrections to their FAFSA beginning mid-March.

Prospective students should submit their 2024-2025 FAFSA by March 1, regardless of which application round they applied in. If you are a prospective student/parent that will be unable to file your 2024-2025 FAFSA by March 1, please reach out to our office at finaid@wpi.edu or (508) 831-5469.

Current WPI students should file their 2024-2025 FAFSA by May 1.

FAFSA corrections are now available for students and their contributors. If a contributor needs to correct their information, they must login to their own https://studentaid.gov/ account to complete the correction. More information about making corrections to the 2024-2025 FAFSA are available here.

The following document outlines instructions for submitting your FAFSA if your contributor does not have a social security number, available in both English and Spanish.

The Federal Student Aid Estimator provides students and families an estimate of their 2024-2025 federal financial aid using the new Student Aid Index (SAI). 

Please note: This is not a FAFSA. Students will need to complete a 2024-2025 FAFSA when it becomes available after December 2023.

Federal Student Aid has released a series of educational webinars related to recent changes in federal aid including the 2024-2025 FAFSA. You can view these videos on their YouTube channel here.

The webinar below shows a prototoype of the 2024-2025 FAFSA for dependent students.
 

The 2024–25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) includes unprecedented changes to how students and families apply for federal student aid and how we determine eligibility, giving students a better and simpler experience with the FAFSA form. Improvements include a direct data exchange with the IRS for income data elements, a new “Who’s My Parent?” wizard, and a single consolidated portal for all FAFSA help resources.

To help ensure that students and families—and the partners critical to getting student aid dollars into the hands of students—are best prepared for a successful 2024–25 FAFSA cycle, Federal Student Aid has launched the Better FAFSA Better Future Roadmap, which includes the timeline for students and families below.
 

According to the U.S. Department of Education (ED), beginning with the 2024-25 award year, the financial aid administrator (FAA) will no longer be able to file an original or a renewal FAFSA on the student's (or parent's) behalf. This means the FAA will no longer be able to file a FAFSA on the student's behalf using FAFSA on the Web, FAA Access, EDExpress, or any other method. There are no exceptions, not even for incarcerated students. According to a webinar held by FSA on July 13th, 2023, FAAs include guidance counselors, advocates, and third parties who assist students.

As in the past, the FAA can assist the student or parent when preparing to file the FAFSA (as a preparer), such as when completing the paper FAFSA, but the FAA cannot enter that data into FOTW, FAA Access, etc. for the student or parent; the paper FAFSA will need to be mailed to the Federal Processing System (FPS, formerly CPS). Also, as in the past, the FAA will still be able to submit corrections, updates, and adjustments to FAFSA data.

This restriction is due to requirements under the Fostering Undergraduate Talent by Unlocking Resources for Education Act (FUTURE Act), which requires consent from each FAFSA contributor (student, spouse, parent as applicable) to obtain federal tax information (FTI) from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), as well as to protect the confidentiality of that FTI. See the May 12, 2023 Electronic Announcement (GENERAL-23-34), Access and Use of Federal Tax Information (FTI) for Federal Student Aid Programs Beginning with the 2024-25 FAFSA Processing Cycle.

Counselors can find detailed information about the 2024-2025 FAFSA changes here.