FAFSA Submitters Can Now See Their Results Immediately

Students who fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid will now be able to get feedback on their eligibility for grants and loans immediately, thanks to a user experience update the platform launched Monday.

The Office of Federal Student Aid will not only provide instant eligibility information for students who properly filled out the form, but it will also immediately notify those who didn’t of the errors they made.  

“Historically, if a student made an error, we wouldn’t tell them right away. We’d send an email a day or two later asking them to come back and fix it. Which means we were relying on a 17-year-old to read an email, understand it, remember their login, return to the FAFSA, and complete a correction. You can imagine some challenges with that process. Today, that changes,” Aaron Lemon-Strauss, executive director of the FAFSA program, wrote on LinkedIn.

The update is just one of several improvements FSA is planning to make. Others announced earlier this spring include making the federal aid process quicker for families who have filled out the FAFSA for previous children by recalling past data—which took effect several weeks ago—and streamlining the process for parents without Social Security numbers by allowing them to use their individual Taxpayer Identification Number, a change that is expected to launch within the next month.

Starting in the fall, the application process will also be expedited for students who are renewing their aid form.

The Real-Time FAFSA Results update, however, appears to be one of the most significant changes.

“For schools, this is a big operational shift too,” Lemon-Strauss wrote. “If a student is sitting in the financial aid office and needs to make a correction, they can submit it and the school can immediately see the updated record in the FAFSA Partner Portal. No more need to schedule a follow-up two days later to see if everything worked.”