That’s true. FAFSA is federal. If a change to the federal formula negatively impacts the state scholarship, you will want to lobby the state to update its criteria due to the federal changes.
Isn’t it still determined by the FAFSA, though, so whatever gets entered there and whatever SAI comes back, that will likely also determine state aid, no? So it still comes back down to the FAFSA format and how they assess need. Unless I am misunderstanding, which is entirely possible, as I have always found financial aid a bit baffling and these changes have not helped 
At any rate, I definitely have the same concerns - state provided need-based aid is a major part of how we afford college, so any substantial change in that determination would be very bad for us. But I guess we just have to wait and see.
We’ll see and I hope you are correct, but our state based aid is 100% based on filling out the fafsa.
Someone will correct me if I’m wrong…but many of these states determine their need based grants using income…not the FAFSA SAI or EFC.
Yeah, this is what I don’t really know/understand. But both use tax returns and I think for California state aid you’re required to submit the FAFSA…But I really don’t know exactly how they make their determinations.
Your tax return won’t change because if these FAFSA changes.
Hopefully folks like the Calgrant and TAP folks have this figured out.
Hopefully so. Guess we’ll find out in a few months.
(Although I believe UC Berkeley does its best to meet need where possible and have said in the past that if you don’t qualify for state aid for some reason, as long as you have applied and shown that you tried to access this source of aid, they will try to fill any gaps with university aid…I hope that remains true and that most people see little or no change in what they have to pay out of pocket.)
For instate students. I know that’s what you mean…but just in case someone else sees this…it doesn’t apply to OOS students.
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Yes, you are absolutely correct. This only applies to in state students.
yes, understood. This is our first year doing this for our daughter, and will need the fasfa for some of the schools she’s chosen.
Interesting that it was published in The Hill TODAY. Hope its incorrect.
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Yes…and they had THREE years to update the actual form to align with the legislative changes. The point being…they did a lousy job of doing so.
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Us too! Very large discrepancy. Of course we can’t see anything in the system still, only the email 
The income protection was supposed to be increased for the 2024-25 FAFSA. Apparently, it was not. That’s a big oversight.
And that may impact aid at some states.
What I don’t understand is if FSA can fix that as part of the January work they are doing, if that will take a long time, and/or if they need congressional approval for that….
I believe the asset protection issue was part of the FAFSA simplification process that was already approved THREE years ago.
It just wasn’t done in this roll out🤦🏻♀️
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They don’t need Congressional approval to fix it, since it was Congressionally approved already. Fixing it is apparently not a simple task. In the past, issues have been discovered & FAFSAs were reprocessed. It sounds like this doesn’t lend itself to simple reprocessing. For now, it is what it is. But it is impossible to know if it will be fixed for 24-25 or if they will put off implementation until next year.
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I just remembered, a lot of this is actually from the FAFSA Simplification Act of 2019.
What a hot mess! 
I have lots of nieces and nephews in college, and my own twins going next year. My siblings are in a dead panic. They have multiple kids in college and their EFC/SAI just doubled. There’s no way they can pay it. The financial aid offices at their schools are buried with calls. If these numbers hold 10s of thousands of kids are going to have to drop out.
My sister has a kid in college in DC. She lives off campus. She’ll have to be looking at apartments and signing a lease… but she can’t sign one if she has to drop out. But they won’t have a real aid package until… when? Mid-late February? At which point the aid offices will be hit with an avalanche of requests for professional judgment to reduce the SAI.
Total, total train wreck.
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