BRYAN, Texas — There’s a new application for filing out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, FAFSA, for the 2024-2025 school year that can impact Texas families.
The updated version includes:
- Streamlined questions to reduce the amount of time students and families spend on the application
- The opportunity for students to choose which parent's information they will use
- A new rating index to determine a student’s need-based aid
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
“The student and parent section are kind of separate on the application now,” said Beka Hand, a college advisor with AdviseTX. “So the student will fill out their own personal information and invite a contributor. It’s a whole lot easier for the student to determine which parent is going to give the financial aid information.”
Hand said students and families will now see an index rating to determine student aid eligibility.
“They have the student aid index which basically will take into account the parent’s income, the student’s income, their assets, and how many people are in the household so that’s all factored in to determine potentially how much aid the student could receive for college,” Hand said.
Aquarius Almarz is a graduating senior at Bryan High.
Completing the FAFSA is a graduation requirement for high school seniors in Texas.
Students can now choose up to 20 schools on their FAFSA.
Almas has his eyes set on the college of his choice.
“I want to go to Sam Houston to major in computer science or at least software engineering because I’ve been taking the computer science here and I really it and I want it to be my future job,” said Aquarius Almarz, a senior at Bryan High School. “I want to be a game designer.”
With a more streamlined application, Almarz attended financial aid workshops at Bryan High and finished his application in a matter of minutes.
“I just went to ApplyTexas and I came to this school for that too and they were helping me,” said Almarz. “I want to say it didn’t take more than 20 minutes.”
That’s possible due to less questions on the application. From over 100 questions, to just under 40.
“You’re not having to answer every single question now,” said Hand. “As you’re answering questions, it’ll also sift through and only give you the ones they need to know the answers on. That shortens down the process significantly.”
This makes the application and college more accessible to all.
According to the Texas Tribune, the Texas High School class of 2022 missed out on $390 million in Pell Grant money by not completing the FAFSA.
This is the biggest form update in decades pushed by Congress in 2020.
“A big push with the new FAFSA it should be really accessible for a lot of students to do and so hopefully more students will be applying and getting more financial aid because of that,” said Hand.
Bryan ISD hosts financial aid and college application workshops throughout the school year.
The next financial aid workshop is Friday, February 16th from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Bryan High School, followed by another workshop Monday, February 19 from 12 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at Rudder High School.