The first step to apply for financial aid for 2-year or 4-year college or career school is almost always to fill out a form called the FAFSA. Filling out the FAFSA can be confusing. You may have questions like:

• What is the FAFSA?
• How do I know if I need to fill out the FAFSA?
• What information is required to complete it?
• What if I do not live with my parents and I want to apply for financial aid?

Answers to these questions and more can be found below.

FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid. You must submit the FAFSA if you want to apply for federal and state financial aid for college or career school.

Financial aid includes loans, grants, and work-study funds. You must repay loans with interest. You do not have to repay grants unless certain things happen (for example: you withdraw from school). You can earn work-study through a work-study jobs program to help you pay for school. Work-study does not have to be repaid.

The type and amount of financial aid you can get will depend on the income you and/or your parents have to help pay for college. To determine if your parent’s income is included, you will need to determine if you are a dependent or independent student under FAFSA rules.

It depends. The FAFSA asks a set of questions to see if you are a dependent or independent student. These questions are found under Sections 5, 6, and 7 on the FAFSA form.

Dependent students under FAFSA rules WILL put their parent information on their FAFSA. Most students filling out the FAFSA are dependent students.

Independent students under FAFSA rules will NOT have to put parent information on their FAFSA. You are an independent or non-dependent student if you are one or more of these:

1. Over 24 years old
2. Married
3. A graduate or professional student
4. On active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces
5. A veteran
6. A parent to children who get more than half their support from you in a set time period
7. Responsible for someone other than a child or spouse who lives with you and will get more than half of their support from you during a set time period
8. If you are 13 or older, AND are parentless due to the death of both parents, are or were in foster care, or are a dependent or ward of the state
9. Found by a court to be an emancipated minor
10. Under the legal guardianship of someone other than a parent or stepparent
11. Found to be an unaccompanied homeless youth or a self-supporting youth at risk of being homeless determined by:
    1. School district homeless liaisons;
    2. The director of an emergency or transitional shelter, or other program serving individuals who are experiencing homelessness;
    3. The director of a program funded under a TRIO or Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for an Undergraduate program (“GEAR UP”) grant; or
    4. A financial aid administrator at the current institution or at another institution who already decided.

Again, if you can answer yes to any of these situations you are independent and should only provide FAFSA information about yourself.

The new FAFSA launched in 2024 asks about “Student Unusual Circumstances” to determine if a student is provisionally independent. Provisionally Independent students can go ahead and complete the FAFSA without income information from parents but must provide additional information to the financial aid office at their college or career school about why they cannot get income information from parents. Provisionally Independent students are those experiencing circumstances like:

•   Leaving home due to an abusive or threatening environment.
•   Being abandoned or estranged from their parents and not adopted.
•   Having refugee or asylee status and being separated from their parents, or having parents who are displaced in a foreign country.
•   Being a victim of human trafficking.
•   Being incarcerated or having parents who are incarcerated.
•   Being unable to contact their parents because doing so would pose a risk to the student; or
•   Being otherwise unable to contact or locate their parents and not adopted.

Students experiencing any of these situations must provide documentation from someone such as a school counselor, homeless shelter liaison, McKinney-Vento representative, or a community member familiar with the student’s situation. Someone must verify the unusual circumstances faced by the student. Each college or career school determines what is needed to decide if a provisionally independent student is dependent or independent, but if you are found to be independent then you would not have to provide income information about your parent(s).

Dependent students must provide parent information because, under federal law, parents are mostly responsible for paying for their child’s college or technical school instead of the government. The federal government gives financial aid to students whose parents can’t pay for their child’s education, not to students whose parents are simply unwilling to pay.

You will need both parents’ information on the FAFSA unless your parents are separated or divorced. If your parents are separated or divorced, you should use the information of the parent you lived with the most last year. If you lived with both parents equally, you should use the information for the parent who gives you more financial support.

If the parent whose income you are providing has remarried, then the step- parent’s financial information must also be included.

If someone other than your parents is already your legal guardian, you are independent under the FAFSA and your legal guardian’s information WILL NOT be used on the FAFSA unless they have legally adopted you.

If you live apart from your parents, but without a legal guardian, your parents’ information WILL be needed, unless your parents CAN’T provide the necessary information for the FAFSA. (See the next question). For example, if you live with your grandparents, but they have never taken any legal action to obtain guardianship of you, you are not independent and your parents’ financial information will still be needed, unless you meet one of the situations for provisional independence in the question above.

If you live with someone other than your parents, but do not have a legal guardian, your caregiver can file for guardianship to avoid needing your parents’ financial information for your FAFSA.  Read our article on guardianship to learn more. You should plan ahead.

Consider whether to file for guardianship well before the FAFSA deadlines, possibly when you are a junior in high school.

If your parents will not give you the information you need for the FAFSA, you should not use your parent’s information without his or her consent.

FAFSA Section 8 “Apply for a Direct Unsubsidized Loan Only” asks whether your parents are unwilling to provide their information. If the student doesn’t have an unusual circumstance that prevents contacting the parents or obtaining their information, the student must answer “Yes.” With this answer, the student’s school will determine their eligibility for a Direct Unsubsidized Loan. The student will not qualify for other types of federal student aid.

To get financial aid through the FAFSA here are some of the general requirements:

1. Be a citizen or eligible noncitizen of the United
2. Have a Social Security number (unless you are from the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, or )
3. Show you are qualified to obtain a college or career school
4. Be enrolled in an eligible program as a regular student seeking a degree or certificate.
5. Keep up good academic progress
6. Not owe a refund on a federal student grant or be in default on a federal student loan.

These requirements and more are also listed at https://studentaid.gov/. You should be sure you are eligible before you begin filling out the FAFSA.

The due date for the FAFSA depends on the school the student plans to attend, so check with each school first. You can find state-specific due dates for the current college school year at https://studentaid.gov.

Usually, you can begin filling out the FAFSA on October 1st for the next school year. Funds for federal financial aid are limited and go out on a first- come first-serve basis, so you should fill out the form as soon as possible. In West Virginia, the FAFSA is usually due by March 1st for the next school year if you wish to apply for the PROMISE Scholarship and by April 15 if you wish to apply for the WV Higher Education Grant or the WV Invests Grant for the next school year.

Again, aid is limited and awarded on a first-come, first-serve basis, so you should apply as soon as possible. The due dates can and do change, so be sure to check the deadline on https://studentaid.gov for up-to-date information.

There are a few different ways to get and fill out the FAFSA:

• You can fill out the FAFSA online on the Federal Student Aid website at https://studentaid.gov/h/apply-for-aid/fafsa. This is the easiest and fastest way to turn in your FASFA. If you submit your FAFSA online, it will be processed in 1-3 days. Please remember that it will take 1 to 3 business days for your FSA ID and your parents FSA ID to be matched before you can begin the application
• For help filling out the FAFSA form, go to the studentaid.gov/help-center.  Many schools also offer opportunities to help families complete the FAFSA.
• You can print off the FAFSA from a local computer and mail it in, or you can request a printed FAFSA by calling 1-800-4-FED-AID (1-800-433-3243) or 334-523-2691 (TTY for the deaf or hard of hearing 1-800-730-8913). If you mail your FAFSA the processing time will be longer.

When you mail the FAFSA, you will mail it to this address:

Federal Student Aid Programs
P.O. Box 7654
London, KY 40742-7654

You can find additional information about the FAFSA and financial aid available in West Virginia by visiting the College Foundation of West Virginia website.

You can print our guide, Applying for Financial Aid When You Don’t Live With Your Parents, which includes more information about guardianship and the forms to file for guardianship.