This year's Fafsa is out.

That's the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

If you or your child is attending college next year, experts say you should fill it out as soon as possible.

It's one of the first steps to getting any aid when it comes to paying for college.

That's the subject of the next.

Education matters.

One of the bigger changes that we've seen this year over the most recent years, Fafsa, is that families have to have an essay ID created on the spot.

This is something that usually we would have to create those two weeks in advance.

However, you can create those and get access to your student aid account instantaneously.

That's one of the major changes that we've seen out of the Fafsa this year, for sure.

Having those accounts created one for the student and one for the parent or contributor.

If you ever have dependency questions on that as to who qualifies as a contributor, please always reach out to your key outreach counselor or your school counselor.

They can help you with those answers.

And I always encourage families have their Social Security cards with them, have their IDs in the event of any sort of verification concerns, and to keep the previous year's tax return form with them, just in case.

Yeah, we're looking right now at what it looks like, your tutorial and website there, so you can see exactly what you're going to go through as you do this.

But people still run into issues.

What are some of the common, most common mistakes or questions do you think people have about the Fafsa?

I would say some of the big concerns are about what money gets placed on their Fafsa form when it comes to financial contributions.

How do we place that money on there, whether it's savings accounts, retirements, you name it, if they are business owners or own farms, anything like that.

The Fafsa ask questions about real estate, and a lot of families don't know initially that this doesn't include the property you live in.

This is if you own other homes outside of your own personal property.

So those are some of the major concerns that at least I see out of it.

And there are a lot of changes this year.

Audrey, tell us about some of the changes.

Yeah.

Some of the changes is at the very beginning of the Fafsa, where it's asking some students to identify and and use their government issued ID and hold it up at the very beginning of logging into the Fafsa, and it won't select every student to do that.

So that's one of the changes, but it's just to protect, real taxpayers dollars by trying to eliminate identity theft and fraud across nationwide.

I was going to mention that some of the common misconceptions that parents and students have is, I don't need to file the Fafsa.

I won't qualify for anything.

And that's a huge assumption.

A lot of families do qualify, and they don't claim that funding because they simply just assume they wouldn't be eligible for the Pell Grant or other funds that the Fafsa provides.

And so it's very, very important to follow the Fafsa, even if you don't think you're going to qualify, because that's the first step to getting financial aid at most schools in the state is to follow the Fafsa.

Then it enables us to give them other aid once they get to our institution.

And that includes merit based aid as well.

Right.

You have to fill out the Fafsa for most of that.

Is that right?

Yes.

So the Fafsa is going to be required for some institutions to award any any aid for that student.

Yes.

So but but if you need a student loan as well, the federal direct loan is going to be the best option for that student.

It has a low interest rate and that does require the past to be completed.

So I would suggest to any family to apply to to excuse me, to complete the Fafsa the first year.

See what you qualify for.

If you're going to only qualify for loans and you know you're not going to need to take out loans, then that's the only time you should need to file it.

But but most people do fill it out every year.

And that's another thing that people get tripped up on, right?

I would.

Encourage students to always fill out the Fafsa, even if they think they're not going to qualify, because everything changes.

Like this year, the methodology for the Fafsa has changed.

So now more than ever, people have been eligible for the Pell Grant, and a lot of our students get eligible for the state grants and scholarships.

And I know at OSU specifically, we require a fast food to be on file for anybody that fills out a scholarship application.

So and a lot of colleges do the same thing.