(Radio Iowa) – The Free Application for Federal Student Aid known as FAFSA is now open for the next academic year. FAFSA has had issues since an effort to upgrade the process and forms were delayed last year, but U-N-I Financial Aid director Tim Bakula it is now ready for this year. “It’s still at the studentaid.gov website, as usual, and students and families can go and complete that soon as they’d like, listing the schools where they’d want their FAFSA to be sent,” he says. The process in past years has had some bugs in it, but Bakula says so far he hasn’t heard any major issues.

” That’s not to say it’s perfect, or that everyone will go through it without a question, but they’ve built in various prompts and edits that are hopefully making the user experience better for families and completing it more direct and clear in instructions on how to complete it,” he says, “and hopefully allowing schools to then receive the most accurate information that they can about the students that are applying to their schools.” He says the process is key in finding out if you our your child qualifies for financial help. “Families that complete the fast forward putting themselves out there to be eligible for federal student loans, federal grants for instance. Many colleges and universities will use the FAFSA results to determine some scholarship eligibility, although that’s not the fastest primary focus. The FAFSA possible allows a family or student, I should say, to qualify for federal work study dollars,” Bakula says.

Workstudy allows a student to get a campus job to earn a little bit of extra money to help them pay for different things at college. “It really is the number one step to beginning the aid process to receive a financial aid offer from a from a college or university,” he says. Bakula says there are varying deadlines for completing FAFSA and he advises you do it as soon as you can. “The public universities in the state are all within early February as a priority deadline date. I can’t speak to every college in the state of Iowa or nationally, I would recommend, probably the best thing to do for a student would be to go out and look at the colleges that they’re kind of considering and see what dates exist,” he says.

“To complete the FAFSA families would need their 2023 tax information,” he says. “And one of the nice things about the FAFSA anymore is that it will accurately bring in federal tax information directly from the I-R-S once the family provides consent, both the student and the parent, in most cases.” Bakula says filling out the FAFSA should take at most 45 minutes to an hour.