College financial experts say the start date to apply for FAFSA will change from Oct. 1 to sometime in December.plays an important role in making college affordable. This year, the FAFSA application is seeing significant changes that borrowers should be aware of., said typically FAFSA has opened on Oct. 1 of each year. Now, the new FAFSA will not open until sometime in December.
"That could be positive. It sounds positive, but, you know, it's hard to know exactly if they may make it more complicated in the end for students to actually qualify for financial aid. So we'll have to see how positive this is," said Finetti. For dependent students, one of the changes is that if they have both parents, only one parent is required to complete the FAFSA.
One of the changes in the new FAFSA that may be disappointing is that if you have more than one student in college at the same time, this will no longer benefit you. Finetti said the way that FAFSA looks at it is that in the past, it benefited parents because they might have had greater financial aid eligibility.
"Everyone should be applying for scholarships, and I really encourage students to apply for scholarships year-round rather than just targeting a couple of weeks out of the year and making a flurry in an attempt. We have so many scholarships on the ScholarshipOwl platform at any given month of the year," said Finetti.