2024-2025 FAFSA Changes

A significant reduction in the number of questions with skip logic allows for a more streamlined format.

The 2024-25 FAFSA is available in the 11 most common languages spoken by English learner students and their parents.

A contributor is a new term and refers to anyone required to provide information on the form (such as parents/stepparent or a student’s spouse). Each contributor must have their own studentaid.gov account.

Being a contributor does not mean they are financially responsible for the student’s education costs, but it does mean the contributor must provide information on the FAFSA or the application will be incomplete, and the student will not be eligible for federal student aid.

An incomplete FAFSA will be deleted after 45 days of inactivity. Make sure any contributors take action before the 45 days is up. 

Students and their contributors must provide consent for the Department of Education to receive income tax information or confirmation on non-filing status directly from the IRS.

Students and families will see a different measure of their ability to pay for college, and they will experience a change in the methodology used to determine aid. The new need analysis formula removes the number of family members in college from the calculation, allows a minimum SAI of -1500, and implements separate eligibility determination criteria for Federal Pell Grants.

Instead of reporting the income of the parent they live with for most of the year, dependent students of divorced or separated parents now need to report the income of the parent who provides the most financial support.

Previously, the net worth of a family farm or small business with fewer than 100 employees was not required. Beginning with 2024-2025, the net worth of each will be part of the FAFSA calculation. 

Family size is based on federal tax information (FTI) transferred directly from the IRS to the FAFSA via the FUTURE Act Direct Data Exchange (FA-DDX). This means the number of dependents in the family size is now based on the number of individuals who are claimed as dependents on either the applicant’s (if independent) or parent’s (if dependent) U.S. federal tax return. 

If FTI is pulled in, the FAFSA contributor (student and/or parent) is then given the opportunity to manually update the family size if it has changed since filing the applicable tax return.