Adding Colleges to Your FAFSA Form: A Comprehensive Guide
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is a crucial step in the financial aid process for students pursuing higher education. A key part of the FAFSA form is listing the colleges you're interested in attending. This article provides a detailed guide on how to add, change, and manage the colleges on your FAFSA form, ensuring your information reaches the right institutions. Ascent is here to help navigate this process.
Adding Colleges to Your FAFSA Form
Adding colleges to your FAFSA form is a straightforward process. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
- Accessing the FAFSA Form: Log in to your account at fafsa.gov. Your StudentAid.gov account is associated with your Social Security number (SSN) and is unique to you. It serves as your legal electronic signature throughout the financial aid process.
- Navigating to the College Section: Go to the section where the colleges are listed.
- Searching for Colleges: If you already know your school’s info, you can enter it. If not, enter the name/city of your prospective school in the search bar.
- Adding the College: Once you find the correct school, add it to your list.
- Submitting the Form: Click submit.
To avoid losing your information, create a save key, especially if you get distracted during the process.
How Many Colleges Can You Add?
You can list up to 10 schools in your account. You can allow up to 10 schools to have access to that information. Unfortunately, you can only have 10 schools on your FAFSA application at a time.
Changing or Removing Colleges
You can change your college if you’ve set your sights on a different school or program. If you already have 10 schools listed, you’ll need to delete one. After some research, you decide to swap out Kean University for Montclair State University. Now you’re free to add another school! While the college you removed won’t delete the information gathered from you, it won’t get information updates.
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Suppose you’ve added Northwestern, Columbia, Harvard, and Cornell to your application. But then you decided to add Yale and want to remove Harvard.
Understanding the Student Aid Report (SAR)
You’ll receive a Student Aid Report (SAR) when you submit your FAFSA application. This report summarizes the information you provided on your FAFSA form.
FAFSA for Dependent Students and Parental Involvement
In most cases, your children will be considered dependent students and you will be required to participate on their FAFSA forms. The FAFSA form is your child’s application for federal student aid. Each child should start their own FAFSA form and complete the required student sections, provide consent and approval to have their federal tax information transferred directly from the IRS into the form, and sign the form.
A dependent student is required to invite their parent to participate on their form. Before your child can submit the student section of their FAFSA form, they will complete the “Invite a Parent as a Contributor” section. Each child will need to invite only one parent when completing the “Invite a Parent as a Contributor” section of their FAFSA form. If your spouse is required as an additional contributor, you’ll invite them to the FAFSA form when you complete the parent sections.
Before beginning the FAFSA form, you (or your children) can use the Who’s My FAFSA Parent?
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Inviting Parents as Contributors
When each child completes the “Invite a Parent as a Contributor” section of their form, they’ll receive a unique invitation link and code. They can share these directly with you, and you can enter each child’s FAFSA form using their unique link.
Once your child sends the invite, they’ll see a confirmation page. This page will include the unique invitation code for their FAFSA form as well as a direct invitation link. As an alternative method, when each child completes the “Invite a Parent as a Contributor” section of their form, they’ll receive a unique invitation link and code. They can share these directly with you, and you can enter each child’s FAFSA form using their unique link. As a final option, you can visit the FAFSA landing page at fafsa.gov. No matter which method you use, you’ll log in to your StudentAid.gov account and be taken to the “Accept FAFSA® Invitation” page. There, a text box will prompt you to enter the unique invitation code for your child.
Completing the Parent Sections
After you enter the first FAFSA form, you’ll need to complete the parent sections, provide consent and approval for the transfer of federal tax information from the IRS into the form, and sign the form. Providing your consent and approval is required before your children can be eligible for federal student aid.
The federal tax information that’s transferred into each child’s FAFSA form-along with the additional financial information that you and each child provide in the form-will be used to calculate their Student Aid Index (SAI). When you complete the “Parent Finances” section of your children’s FAFSA forms, you’ll need to report the value of your child’s education savings accounts as part of your response to the question that asks for your current “Net Worth of Investments, Including Real Estate.” You must report the amount for each child and report the value for just that child, so make sure the child’s name is listed at the top of the FAFSA form to avoid errors.
After you complete the parent sections, you’ll sign the FAFSA form. You must sign each child’s FAFSA form for it to be complete. Each child’s FAFSA form has its own unique invitation code, so make sure you enter the correct code. If you mistype or use the wrong code, you’ll receive an error message.
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Tracking and Receiving Financial Aid Offers
After each child’s FAFSA form is submitted, you and your children will be able to track the status of their forms. The colleges, career schools, or trade schools they listed on their forms will send financial aid offers if they’re accepted for admission.
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