Please note that while some of the information on this page is relevant to any student completing a FAFSA, there are sections that are particular to Columbia College and Columbia Engineering. If you are a student of any other school, please contact your school's financial aid office to learn about how these changes are impacting their policies and procedures.

2024-25 FAFSA

Date Available: The 2024-25 FAFSA is currently available for submissions. It is periodically being brought down for maintenance.

Known Issues: The Department of Education has created a Known Issues website that is listing all issues that have have been identified, but not corrected with the new FAFSA. If you are experiencing an issue with submitting your FAFSA, you can review this Known Issues website to see if your issue is listed and how to work around it.

There have been some issues reported in the media that the FAFSA calculated incorrect Student Aid Indexes(SAI's). The Department of Education will be reprocessing all affected FAFSA's. Our office will wait for that reprocessing to take place before we conduct our final reviews of FAFSA information.

Tracking of FAFSA Submission: Columbia is now regularly receiving FAFSA information from the Department of Education and updating our tracking information as we receive FAFSA files. The Department has indicated that it might take up to 3 business days from the submission of a FAFSA for it to be sent to schools. If you have submitted your FAFSA more than 3 business days ago and it is not showing up in our document tracking, check to confirm that you added school code 002707. If not, please add that school code once the FAFSA start to allow corrections.

Updating Your FAFSA: The Department of Education has notified schools that students and contributors should be able to submit updates to their FAFSAs some time after April 15th.

Newly Admitted Students: Newly admitted students are being provided with their preliminary financial aid eligibility at the time of their admission. The initial evaluation was be based on the CSS Profile and any other documents required in our process. Students should submit the FAFSA as soon as possible now that it is available for submissions. In early to mid-summer, our office will review FAFSA information and make any necessary adjustments to financial aid offers. For students who have Columbia Grants in their offers, no matter what change we make, the Net Cost in your preliminary financial aid offer will not change. We might need to change the makeup of your grants or other aid, but the Net Cost will not change.

What Is Changing

Completing the FAFSA: The FAFSA is being overhauled to make it simpler and shorter to complete. Most data that can be found on an individual's Federal Tax Return will remain part of the FAFSA, while a number of questions that can not be found on a tax return will be removed.

The EFC is now the SAI: Previously, the result of the FAFSA has been the Estimated Family Contribution (EFC). The result of FAFSAs in 2024-25 and going forward will be the Student Aid Index (SAI). In addition to the name, the formula behind it has changed as well. However, it is still significantly correlated with income and assets. While the EFC could go no lower than $0, the SAI will be permitted to calculate to as low as -$1,500. For students with negative SAIs, all calculations of Federal Financial Need will treat the SAI as equal to $0.

Contributors: Individuals who provide information on a student's FAFSA are now called Contributors. This is in place of terms such as student, spouse and parent.

Consent: Since all income data will now come directly from the IRS, including confirmation when an individual doesn't have a tax return on file, all contributors will now need to provide consent for their information to be used as part of the 2024-25 FAFSA. It is important for all contributors (student, parents and spouses) to provide consent when prompted. Not providing consent will disqualify the student from being eligible for Federal financial aid and in certain instances might impact a student's Columbia grants.

Where the data comes from: The IRS Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) will be replaced with the FUTURE Act Direct Data Exchange (FADDX). This change in the flow of data will allow all contributors with a Social Security Number (SSN) or who file taxes to have their information transferred directly to the Department of Education.

FSA IDs:. All contributors should create their FSA IDs if they don't already have one, even if they do not have an SSN. While some students may only need one parent to create a FSA ID, others will need both parents to create one. In short, if your parents file their taxes as Married Filing Jointly, then only one parent will need an FSA ID. However, if your parents file with any other tax status, they each will need a separate FSA ID. At present, the process for contributors without SSNs isn't available yet, but it should be soon. We will update this page once instructions are available.

Asset reporting: Previously, most small businesses and farms were not required to be reported on the FAFSA. Now, the net worth of all businesses and farms must be reported as assets on the FAFSA. A family's primary home and designated retirement assets (IRAs, 401Ks, 403bs, etc) are still excluded from the FAFSA.

Divorced Parents: In families where the student's biological parents are divorced, the parent of record is the parent who provided the greater portion of the student's financial support during the 12 months immediately prior to filing the FAFSA. If that parent is remarried, then that parent's spouse (the student's step-parent) must be included on the FAFSA as well. This is a change to the prior standard of which parent the student lived with more.

Additional information: The Department of Education will be regularly updating their website with more information for students and families at: https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/fafsa-support. Similarly, our office will continue to update our website as well.

Impacts for Columbia College and Columbia Engineering Students

Timelines: A significant impact this year has to do with the timeline, in particular for newly admitted students. While the late opening of the FAFSA means that we will not have your FAFSA for the initial file review, we will still be able to provide preliminary financial aid eligibility based on your CSS Profile data. The Department of Education has noted that they will return to an October 1st launch in future years.

Pell Grant Eligibility: Our office uses the CSS Profile and our own internal analysis to determine a combination of Parent Contribution, Student Contribution (summer earnings) and Work-study expectation. Once those amounts are calculated, we meet the remainder of a student's financial need with grants from Federal, State and Institutional sources. While we do expect that a certain number of students will have changes to their Federal Pell Grant eligibility once their FAFSA is submitted, Columbia's policy of meeting full need means that the sum of all of your grants will remain the same, regardless of what happens to your eligibility for a Federal Pell Grant. In short, your net cost after all grants will remain the same.

Number in College Adjustment: The FAFSA is removing the Number in College question and will no longer adjust for this. This change only impacts your eligibility for Federal financial aid. The CSS Profile and Columbia are still taking the number of undergraduates in college into account when we are doing our analysis for your overall financial aid eligibility. So although the change in the FAFSA might impact some student's eligibility for Subsidized Direct Loans or Federal Work-study, the change will not impact your total grants or net cost at Columbia.

Contacting Our Office

Financial Aid and Educational Financing is open for walk-ins and phone calls. You can also reach us by e-mailing ugrad-finaid@columbia.edu or by requesting an appointment.