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Changes to FAFSA

Changes Coming to the 2024-2025 FAFSA

Congress has instituted the FAFSA Simplification Act, which is a sweeping redesign of the processes and systems used to award federal student aid. As the changes are implemented our office will work to assist students and their families through this process.

Changes in Terminology

The EFC (Estimated Family Contribution) will now be the SAI (Student Aid Index).
Room and Board will now be referred to as Food and Housing.
Parents, guardians, and/or a student's spouse will now be referred to as Contributors.
The Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) has been renamed the Federal Taxpayer Information (FTI)

Change in Date FAFSA Becomes Available

Rather than opening on October 15th, the FAFSA will now open by the end of December.
Due to the late release of the 24-25 FAFSA, the CSS Profile and 2022 tax returns will be used to estimate federal and institutional aid eligibility for Early Decision I financial aid packages. While the FAFSA will eventually be needed to finalize these packages, it is unlikely that it will change the estimates greatly unless different information is reported on this application.

Changes in the FAFSA Itself

All students and contributors will be required to give consent for the FAFSA to pull your tax information from the IRS.
In cases of divorced or separated parents, the custodial parent is determined by whichever parent contributes more to the student. If the amount contributed is the same then the parent with the higher income will be used.
The number of students in college will no longer impact the SAI.
All students and contributors will be required to have their own FSA ID to complete their portion of the FAFSA.
Parents without an SSN can now create and FSA ID and no longer need to sign a paper copy.
Students can now list up to 20 schools on their FAFSA rather than the previous 10.

What can you do now to prepare?

All students and contributors will be required to have their own FSA ID to complete their portion of the FAFSA. If you don't already have an FSA ID, create one now on the FSA website.
Mark your calendar for December 2023 – we’ll update here once we know the official date that you can complete your 2024-2025 FAFSA.
Check back often for updates – this is the biggest update to the FAFSA in 40 years. We will update here as more information becomes available.

FAQs

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When will the 24-25 FAFSA be available to families to complete and submit?

What are the changes to the FAFSA?

Changes include, but are not limited to:

The number of questions on the FAFSA has decreased from over 100 to less than 50.
The EFC (Estimated Family Contribution) is now the Student Aid Index (SAI).
Students can list up to 20 schools on their FAFSA via the online application.
The Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) has been renamed the Direct Data Exchange (DDX)
All students and contributors will be required to have their own FSA ID to complete their portion of the FAFSA.
The students, spouse, and parent(s) will now need to provide their consent in the new Consent to Retrieve and Disclose Federal Tax Information section of the FAFSA for federal student aid eligibility.
- This consent will allow the IRS to share Federal Tax Information (FTI)
- If any party to the FAFSA form does not provide consent, submission of the form will still be allowed. However, a Student Aid Index (SAI) will not be calculated.

Will this impact the amount of financial aid I am eligible to receive at Brandeis?

I heard the 24-25 FAFSA will no longer count by sibling(s) in college. Will this reduce the amount of aid I am eligible to receive?

While the FAFSA will ask about siblings enrolled in college, the analysis will not adjust for this. As such, this could impact the amount of federal aid you are eligible to receive. However, at this time, Brandeis has no plans to change how we determine eligibility for need-based institutional scholarship for undergraduate students. Thus, when families have more than one child in undergraduate college at the same time we will consider the the cost of the other sibling(s) enrolled in undergraduate college when determining eligibility for need-based Brandeis scholarship.