The FAFSA Simplification Act at a Glance

After you do your research, meet with admission representatives, decide which colleges to apply to, and apply to those colleges, the time comes to shift your focus to financial aid. You probably already know that the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the application used to determine your eligibility for federal and state financial aid in the U.S. What you may not be aware of is that for the 2024–2025 aid year, the FAFSA process has gone through significant changes that will affect how your aid eligibility is calculated. When you go to complete the FAFSA on the Federal Student Aid website, you'll also see updates in terminology, processes, and less questions!

While these changes may take some getting used to, our hope is that these changes will make it easier for students to complete this important step in securing financial aid each year.

You heard that right, the updated FAFSA application will be more user-friendly with a streamlined format and the number of questions has been reduced from 108 to 46. Revised methodology will be introduced to calculate and determine applicant eligibility with a new need-analysis formula. Plus, students may now list up to 20 colleges instead of the previous 10 and the FAFSA form has been expanded to include the 11 most common languages spoken in the U.S. These changes and more are the result of the FAFSA Simplification Act passed by Congress in 2020 and the goal is as the name implies — to simplify the FAFSA process. While these changes may take some getting used to, our hope is that these changes will make it easier for students to complete this important step in securing financial aid each year.

The Department of Education has begun a soft launch of the 2024–2025 FAFSA and the form is now available at the Federal Student Aid website. Throughout this soft launch, this overhauled application may become temporarily unavailable as the Department of Education continues to perform required site maintenance. Drexel recommends monitoring the Federal Student Aid website and completing the FAFSA when you see it is available. In particular, any admitted Drexel Early Action or Early Decision students who received estimated federal financial aid in their package based on their CSS Profile should file a FAFSA as soon as possible in order to have their actual eligibility for federal resources, such as grants, loans, and work-study. As a reminder, Drexel's FAFSA school code is 003256.

The 2024–2025 FAFSA will be based upon your family's financial information from 2022. You (and your parent/guardian, if you are a dependent student) will also need to create a Federal Student Aid (FSA) ID in order to complete and sign the FAFSA. Once you have submitted a complete application, the Department of Education typically takes 3–5 business days to fully process your FAFSA. However, due to the delay in opening and changes to the process, Drexel will not begin receiving FAFSA data until February 2024. Submitted FAFSA forms won’t be reflected in student’s portals until this time.

From all of us in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at Drexel, we hope that the FAFSA process goes smoothly, and we can't wait to see you here at Drexel!