How to Fill Out the FAFSA, Step by Step

The FAFSA is the form that students in the United States fill out to apply for federal student aid for college or career school. FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The form is free to file, and most states, colleges, and career schools use the same form to decide what aid a student may receive.

The direct answer

To fill out the FAFSA, create a StudentAid.gov account and FSA ID, gather your Social Security number, tax returns, income records, and bank balances, then start the form, give consent for tax data to transfer from the IRS, complete the contributor sections, add up to 20 schools, and sign and submit the form. There is no fee to file it.

Before you start

Before you open the form, it helps to know what it does. The FAFSA collects information about you and, in most cases, about your family. The schools you list receive that information and use it to work out what federal aid you may be offered, such as grants, work study, and student loans. You do not need to know which aid you will get before you start. You only need to fill out the form honestly and completely. Federal Student Aid says most people finish in less than an hour.

Create your StudentAid.gov account and FSA ID

The first step is to create a StudentAid.gov account. This account gives you an FSA ID, which is your username and password for the Federal Student Aid site. You use it to sign in, to start and sign the FAFSA form, and to view your aid information later. Keep your username and password in a safe place, and do not share them with anyone.

If you are a dependent student, your parent or parents are contributors on your form, and each contributor needs their own StudentAid.gov account and FSA ID. A spouse can also be a contributor if you are married. Each person creates their own account with their own email address and their own password. Each person uses only their own account.

Gather your documents first

Gathering your documents before you start makes the form much easier. You will need your Social Security number, and you will need your federal tax returns and records of your income. It also helps to have records of your bank balances and any other money you have saved or invested. You do not need to send these papers to anyone. You only need the numbers from them while you fill out the form.

Make a short checklist before you begin:

• Your Social Security number
• Your tax returns and income records
• Records of your bank balances
• A list of the schools you want to apply to
• Your contributors’ contact details, so you can invite them to the form

If you are a dependent student, you will also need your parents’ tax returns, income records, and bank balances. If you are married, you will need the same information for your spouse. Ask each contributor to have their own papers ready, because each person fills out their own part of the form with their own numbers.

Start the form and give consent for your tax data

When you are ready, go to studentaid.gov and sign in with your FSA ID. Choose the FAFSA form for the school year you are applying for, and start a new form. The form will ask you a set of questions to work out whether you are a dependent student or an independent student. The answer decides whose information the form needs, so answer these questions with care.

Next, you will be asked to give your consent for your federal tax information to be transferred from the IRS into your FAFSA form. This step is required on the current form. This lets the form pull your tax data straight from the IRS. Each contributor must give this consent for their own tax information too. If a contributor does not give consent, you will not be eligible for federal student aid, even if everything else on the form is complete.

The contributor sections and why a missing contributor can hold up the form

A contributor is any person whose information the form needs besides your own. For a dependent student, that usually means a parent or both parents. For a married independent student, it can mean a spouse. You will enter each contributor’s name, date of birth, Social Security number, and email address, and the form will send them an email invite.

A missing contributor can hold up the whole form. The form cannot be submitted until every required contributor has completed and signed their own section. If a parent has not yet created an account, or if the invite email went to an old address, the form will wait. Check that each contributor has received the email, and ask them to finish their section as soon as they can.

Add your schools

Next, you add the schools you want to receive your FAFSA information. You can list up to 20 schools on the online form. You can add a school by searching for its name, its city, or its school code. Add every school you are thinking about, even if you have not yet been accepted.

Sign and submit

Before you sign, read through the form one more time. Check your name, your Social Security number, and the schools on your list. Make sure each contributor has finished and signed their section. Then sign the form with your FSA ID and submit it. Filing the FAFSA is free. There is no fee, and no one should charge you to file it. The official form is at studentaid.gov.

What the confirmation shows

After you submit, you will see a confirmation page. It shows your data release number, and it may show an estimated Student Aid Index, which is called the SAI. The SAI is a number the form works out from your information, and schools use it as part of working out your aid.

Sometimes the confirmation page says that your SAI cannot be calculated yet, or that your application is still being processed. That is normal. Your information may take one to three days to process.

What happens next

After processing, your FAFSA data is sent to the schools on your list. Each school uses your information to work out what aid it can offer you, and your aid offers come later, once the school has finished its own review. You can log in to your StudentAid.gov account at any time to view your Submission Summary. If you spot a mistake, you can log in and make a correction.

A worked example: Maya and her parent finish the form in one sitting

This is an example only. The people and numbers here are made up to show how the steps fit together.

Maya is a student who plans to start college in the fall. On a Sunday evening, she sits down with her parent to fill out the FAFSA. Maya already created her StudentAid.gov account the week before, and her parent created theirs the same day. They have their tax returns and bank balances ready, and Maya has a list of three schools.

Maya signs in and starts a new form. The form asks if she is a dependent student, and her answers show that she is, so her parent is a contributor. Maya gives consent for her tax data to transfer from the IRS. Then she enters her parent’s details, and the form sends her parent an invite. Her parent signs in, gives consent, completes their section, and signs it.

Next, Maya adds her three schools to the form. She reads the whole form once more, checks her details, and then she signs and submits it. The confirmation page shows her data release number and an estimated SAI. A few days later, she reads her Submission Summary, and her schools receive her information.

Quick answers

Related guides

These guides on Invest Clarity Path cover the next steps after you file:

• FAFSA Due Date Explained: Federal, State and College Deadlines
• Pell Grant Eligibility and Income: How Much Aid You Can Get
• SAP Appeal for Financial Aid: Why Aid Stops and How Appeals Work

Further reading

• Filling Out the FAFSA Form, Federal Student Aid
• Federal Student Aid home page

This content is educational only. It is not financial advice.