In 2015, a couple of major changes were announced to the very important Free Application for Federal Student Aid, also known as the FAFSA. With the changes being implemented next month, we're going to use this blog post to break down the changes for you. We're also going to use this space to talk about the implications of these changes for students filing the FAFSA for the first time as well as for student who have previously filed.

First, what's changed?

Previously, the FAFSA, which is a critical part of the college-going process, as it helps determine how much financial aid a student receives, opened each year on January 1, after many students had completed the college application process. This meant that, in many cases, students would learn about college acceptances well in advance of learning about how much financial aid they would receive, leaving them to make a big life decision without all of the information necessary to make it an informed decision.

As a result, the U.S. Department of Education has changed the start date of the FAFSA from January 1 to October 1 to allow students and families to complete the form at the same time that they complete their college applications and to allow higher ed institutions to make decisions about financial aid at the same time that they make admissions decisions. The intended benefit here is to help students and families make a more informed choice about where to enroll. Whereas previously, many students had to declare where they would enroll before knowing how much financial aid they would receive, moving up the availability of the FAFSA will allow them to have a clearer picture about total cost of attendance and how much financial aid they will receive so they can make a sound financial decision.

Making the FAFSA available earlier presented a challenge, though. The FAFSA is completed using prior-year income tax information. So, students who enrolled in a postsecondary program for the Fall 2016 semester used their families' 2015 income tax information. But since families will not have their 2016 tax information yet (because 2016 will not yet have ended by the time the FAFSA opens in October), the second big change to the FAFSA is the use of prior-prior-year (PPY) tax information to complete the form. So, students intending to enroll in a postsecondary program for the 2017/2018 academic year will use their 2015 tax information in order to take advantage of the earlier FAFSA and ideally receive admissions and financial aid award information at the same time.

Another benefit to the PPY change is that it makes actually completing the form easier, since nearly everyone who filed their 2015 tax returns can easily transfer that information to the FAFSA form electronically, using the IRS Data Retrieval Tool, taking some of the headache out of completing the form.

So what does this mean to you? Click here to read more.

• Are graduating high school seniors and adult learners;
• Have or will have obtained their high school diploma or GED;
• Demonstrate financial need;
• Are pursuing an eligible non-degree certificate, license or degree in a vocational or technical program that is up to two years in length;
• Do not have a bachelor's degree;
• Are attending a public or private not-for-profit college or university, technical / career or certified training center;
• Must be a resident of Cuyahoga, Lake or Lorain County.