Washington
CNN
—

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA, officially opened Thursday for students seeking financial aid for college during the 2025-2026 school year.

The form traditionally opens on October 1, but the Ministry of Education has delayed its release in an attempt to avoid a repeat of last year’s troubled rollout after making major updates to the application. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed concern that the issues would prevent some low-income students from attending college in the first place.

Filing the form is required for students to access federal Pell grants, student loans and other forms of financial aid and is completed by millions of people each year.

The department has been testing the 2025-2026 form by having a limited number of students and families apply since Oct. 1. Officials had expected to officially release the form on December 1, but pushed back the opening date after conducting four phases of testing.

“The results during the beta testing were very encouraging,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on a call with reporters.

As of Tuesday morning, 167,000 applications had been successfully submitted.

“The FAFSA Form 2025-26 is ready for prime time and is available both online and in paper form,” Cardona said.

Earlier this week, both the Senate and House of Representatives passed a bill that, if signed into law, would legally require the Department of Education to open the FAFSA form on October 1 each year.

In late December of last year, a new version of the FAFSA form — a culmination of changes approved by Congress in 2019 and 2020 — was released.

The changes make the FAFSA easier to complete and provide more financial aid to students and families, but implementation has been plagued with problems.

The botched rollout resulted in significant delays for students, many of whom were still waiting for financial aid award letters — showing how much they will have to pay for college — as they tried to decide where to enroll next fall.

An earlier analysis from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the number of FAFSA submissions was down 3%, or 432,000, compared to the year before (late August – when most fall college terms began) and that the decline in the number of applications was greatest for low students. -student income.

The Department of Education has said that September submissions dropped to about 2% and more students are eligible for Pell grants, which are awarded to students with the lowest incomes.

Many students whose parents do not have Social Security numbers encountered difficulty filing the 2024-25 form while waiting for the government to verify their identity through other means.

Now these students may submit the FAFSA 2025-26 even if their parents’ identities have yet to be verified.

Before submitting the FAFSA through the Federal Student Aid website, a student must create a Federal Student Aid username and password, also known as an FSA ID. Parents of dependent students must also create an FSA ID and complete part of the application.

The number of questions on the FAFSA varies by applicant based on his or her financial circumstances, but there are about two-thirds fewer questions because from last year’s form than in previous years.

It is easier to complete than in years past because some information is now pulled directly from a filer’s tax return, so a filer does not have to hunt for information. Additionally, a handful of questions have been eliminated from the updated form.

Most people are expected to take less than an hour to complete the FAFSA form, including gathering all the information needed to complete it.

The Department of Education has added 700 agents to its contact center since January and will add another 225 in the coming weeks to help students and families submit the form. It also added extended FAFSA-only weekday evenings and Saturday hours to the contact center.