After weeks of testing the application, the U.S. Department of Education released this cycle’s FAFSA form on Thursday.

Seth Wenig/AP

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Seth Wenig/AP

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is now open to all students and families hoping to receive help paying for college in the 2025-2026 school year.

After weeks of testing the online form, the U.S. Department of Education released the official application on studentaid.gov on Thursday. The form may not look new, but it has certainly improved from last year’s version.

“Honestly, it’s a piece of cake,” says Christina Martinez, a financial aid counselor at California State University, Los Angeles. She has been helping students complete the form during testing period and says, “It’s been going very smoothly.”

That’s completely different from what students experienced during the last FAFSA cycle:

After a congressionally mandated overhaul intended to simplify the form, the FAFSA was significantly delayed and rolled out plagued with problems. As a result, many students had to do so waiting months longer than usual to figure out what college would cost them and where they could afford to enroll, forcing many to delay their decisions. There is concern some students decided to postpone college altogether. A recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that problems with the latest FAFSA “contributed to approximately 9 percent fewer high school seniors and other new applicants filing a FAFSA, with the largest decline among lower-income students.”

MorraLee Keller, of the nonprofit National College Attainment Network (NCAN), says this year’s form appears nearly identical to last year’s, but the user experience has improved significantly.

“We really need to spread a very positive message that a lot of work has gone into this system for 2025-2026 to make it a very different experience than last year. So everyone needs to give the system a chance.”

What the Education Department is doing differently this time

Completing the FAFSA is the only way students can access financial aid from the federal government and qualify for grants, loans and some scholarships. More than 17 million students complete the application every year.

Normally the form will be available to all students on October 1. But this year, the department began testing the form with a limited number of students and institutions. FAFSA Executive Advisor Jeremy Singer said in an August press release that the testing period was intended “to identify and resolve issues with the FAFSA form before the form is available to millions of students and their families.”

During the last FAFSA cycle, in addition to problems with the form, students also had difficulty reaching the FAFSA call center for assistance. According to the GAO, “nearly three-quarters of all calls to the call center” went unanswered in the first five months after the rollout. This time, the Ministry of Education has increased call center staffing – by almost 80% since January – and plans to extend the center’s operating hours.

“So far the call center is doing very well,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education James Kvaal told NPR. “At the volume we’re at right now, people are getting answered very, very quickly.”

He cautions that there may be times when higher call volumes lead to wait times, but he is confident the experience will be smoother overall.

Beth Maglione, CEO and interim president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), says she has been closely watching the department’s testing process and is pleased with what she has seen.

“Federal leaders have more or less listened and taken to heart the lessons learned from last year’s troubled rollout, and used those lessons to chart a more stable path forward.”

A less painful process so far

Low-income students and students whose parent or spouse does not have a Social Security Number (SSN) – which the GAO refers to as “mixed status families” – suffered the most from the troubled rollout of the previous FAFSA. One challenge for mixed-status families was an issue that prevented anyone without a Social Security number from completing the form.

Kvaal says during the beta testing period, “We’ve made some changes to make the process easier for parents and spouses who don’t have a Social Security number. Those people can get through now, and that wasn’t always possible or eight months ago.”

At Cal State LA, where Christina Martinez works, the majority of students are low-income, and many come from mixed-status families. She says most of her students encountered problems with the form last year, but this year it’s a different story.

Martinez says the form contains more educational language, which helps students avoid mistakes. On average, she says it takes students about 20 minutes to complete the form, although the FAFSA website suggests they should allow about an hour. (It also says on the website a checklist how to prepare for the application.)

NCAN’s Keller says that while she’s excited about the improvements, she’s also waiting to see how the new FAFSA system will respond to a larger volume of applications now that the form is officially out of beta testing and open to all families.

Keller has one piece of advice for students and families, which Martinez and Maglione echoed: fill out your FAFSA as soon as possible.

“Let’s not wait. Jump in. Take your FAFSA as soon as possible,” says Keller. “Hopefully, allowing students to start their FAFSA in mid-November will result in things like earlier award letters, more time to make decisions, better decisions.”