By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
All week long on wealth, we’ll be breaking down how to manage the student loan process from applying to starting repayment. The free application for federal student aid, better known as FAFSA, helps the federal government determine how much aid incoming students are eligible to receive. As of March 17th, over 8 million FAFSA applications for the 25-26 school year have been processed by the Department of Education. Want to bring in Jennifer Finetti, scholarship owl director of student advocacy. Thank you so much for being here. So let’s start with the basics here. When is the deadline for this year’s FAFSA?
00:51 Jennifer Finetti
Excuse me, the federal deadline for the FAFSA is June 30th. Excuse me. Uh but each state has their own deadline that may be earlier or the same as the federal and then on top of that, the colleges sometimes have their own deadlines. So it really depends on where you live and which college you’re attending or plan to attend. It’s a little bit of leg work for the student to find that out.
01:37 Speaker A
Yeah. So check the states, check the colleges. All right. And then what documents should parents and students have on hand when they’re ready to apply?
01:50 Jennifer Finetti
So, you know, you need to have certain financial documents. You need to have any income and asset information. Uh if you receive child support, you need to have that information. Uh you need to have your social security number or if you are an eligible non-citizen for the FAFSA, you’ll need to have your A number. Uh and uh that pretty much accomplishes everything you need, you know, you need to have your FAFSA ID number, things like that.
02:33 Speaker A
And what about when, after you make the application? What are the different types of aid that FAFSA can potentially qualify you for?
02:46 Jennifer Finetti
So you can qualify for federal or state grant aid. You can qualify for, of course, student loans, uh federal work study, um that’s yeah, that’s pretty much it. And then of course you can also get scholarships. You can get institutional scholarships from the universities themselves as well as uh private external scholarships like what we have on the scholarship owl platform.
03:51 Speaker A
And Jennifer, President Trump has said he intends to dismantle the Department of Education. Has the administration actually taken any action that would change things for FAFSA applicants?
04:07 Jennifer Finetti
You know, the US Department of Education is the administrator of federal student aid. So far at least, there doesn’t seem to be a change in uh federal student aid for students. However, you know, this situation is fluid. So we don’t really know exactly what the impact will be. However, students should submit their FAFSA if they hasn’t have not already and uh they should also focus on creating their own affordable path to college, which would mean applying for scholarships, uh applying for a job so that they have a job while they’re in school and of course a summer job. These are things that students can do to avoid really focusing on something that they don’t have control of, which is what’s happening at the federal level. Uh also, you know, they should really be thinking about choosing the most affordable path to college. For students who have applied for college, they need to make their admission decision by May 1st, so they should be comparing and contrasting uh financial aid offers they’ve received so that they can make the best choice for themselves, not just academically and personally, but especially financially.