FAFSA

Dear families,

Senior year of high school is an exciting time for you and your student. We hope you can make wonderful memories before your student heads off to college.

This is a good time to have a conversation with your student about college costs and financial aid for college. Having these conversations now and taking action early can simplify the process for you and your student. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) application will be available starting October 1st.

FAFSA is used to determine eligibility for various student aid including federal, state, and school-based, as well as grants and scholarships. Therefore, the sooner the FAFSA is completed, the sooner you and your student can make informed college choices.

With that in mind, we encourage you and/or your student to 1) create their FAFSA ID account and 2) start gathering the documents needed to start the FAFSA application. The FAFSA application window opens up on October 1!

Gather the documents you need:

Your Social Security number
Your driver’s license number if you have one
Your Alien Registration number if you are not a U.S. citizen
Federal tax information or tax returns including IRS W-2 information, for you (and your spouse, if you are married), and for your parents if you are a dependent student: IRS 1040

For undocumented/dreamer students, you are not eligible to fill out the FAFSA. You may fill out the California Dream Act Application (CADAA) which is required to determine financial aid for California AB 540 eligible students. Click here to learn more.

FAFSA and CADAA help is available! It's very important that the information you include on the FAFSA application is accurate. Feel free to contact your high school counselor and/or attend a Cal-SOAP FAFSA workshop.

Sincerely,

San Diego Unified