By Angel Camacho, Advice Columnist—
The FAFSA application is one of the craziest applications to fill out. The FAFSA helps students receive financial aid from the government.
A lot of students, however, have difficulty filling out the FAFSA application which is understandable.
To fill out the FAFSA you will need to make an FSA ID which you will create on the FAFSA website. It takes an estimated 5-10 minutes to create an FSA ID.
If you’re dependent under your parents or parent, you will need to make an account for your parent as well unless your parent doesn’t have a social in which you can’t make an account for them at all.
However, if you’re independent you can ignore the steps above and just do your own thing.
To be independent on the FAFSA application you need to be 24 years old. The only way to be independent before that age is to be married or have a child or have a deceased parent—otherwise, you’re dependent if none of that applies to you.
Back to the FSA ID, once you’ve created everything now you can start the FAFSA application. You begin and they ask you the simple questions in which you read and answer. The questions by the way are quite simple and should be easy.
Answer the questions with honesty but the difficult part of the application is the tax part. The FAFSA does go by two years with the tax part; for example, the 2019-2020 application requires the 2017 taxes while the 2020-2021 requires the 2018 taxes.
If you’re able to do the link to IRS please do it because that will save you time by transferring the taxes instead of putting the money in by itself—but sometimes people won’t be able to use the transfer tool so be aware.
Other than that enjoy doing FAFSA and there is assistance on campus at 225 Market Street for the FAFSA application that is ran by FAFSA coordinator Shakere Banks and lead FAFSA work-study myself Angel Camacho.
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