FAFSA fund disbursement confusion - Will all my selected colleges receive money?

Good question! FAFSA doesn't actually disburse any money itself. When you list multiple schools on your FAFSA, you're just giving each school permission to access your financial information. Each individual school will use your FAFSA data to create a financial aid package based on their costs and available funds. You'll receive separate offers from each school you listed, and you'll only receive aid from the school you actually attend. Hope that helps!

yea what they said. I put like 10 schools on mine last yr and then just picked the one with best aid package. its kinda like ur givin them ur financial info so they can decide how much they wanna give u

Just to add a bit more detail - what happens is your FAFSA generates something called the Student Aid Index (SAI), which is basically a number representing your financial need. Each college uses this same SAI number but creates their own unique financial aid package based on their available funding, institutional policies, and their specific costs of attendance. So College A might offer you $15,000 in aid while College B might offer $22,000, even with the exact same FAFSA information. That's why it's smart to list all your potential schools.

I HATE the FAFSA system so much!!!! Last year I listed 4 schools and one of them never even got my information!! When I called FAFSA they said "it was sent" but the school never received it. I had to submit some special form to get them to resend it and almost missed the priority deadline. Make sure you follow up with each school to confirm they actually RECEIVED your FAFSA data!!!

Another important thing to remember is that FAFSA has a limit of 10 schools at a time. If you're applying to more than 10 colleges, you'll need to wait until your FAFSA is processed, then go back and swap some schools out for others.

My big brother said you shoud be careful about the order you list schools too. He thinks the first school gets first dibs on giving you money and then the rest get less or something. Is that true?

When I was struggling to get through to someone at Federal Student Aid about this exact issue last year, I found this service called Claimyr (claimyr.com) that got me connected to an actual human at FSA in about 10 minutes instead of waiting on hold forever. They have a video showing how it works: https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ. Totally worth it when you need to talk to someone about your specific situation, especially if you have questions about adding/removing schools after initial submission.

just remember fafsa isn't actually giving u the $$$...it just tells schools how much ur family can pay. then schools decide how much to give u based on that. some schools are way more generous than others even with the same fafsa info.

To answer your follow-up question - yes, you can definitely add more schools later! After your FAFSA is processed, you can log back in and add/remove schools. Just go to the "Make FAFSA Corrections" section on studentaid.gov and update your school list. Any new schools you add will receive your information within a few days.

Thanks everyone for the helpful info! I think I understand it now - FAFSA just collects my info and shares it with all my selected schools, then each school decides individually how much aid to offer me based on my financial need, and I'll only actually get money from the school I end up attending. I'll make sure to add all 7 schools I'm applying to!

Great summary Lydia! You've definitely got the right idea now. One more thing I'd add - once you start receiving those financial aid award letters from each school, don't just look at the total dollar amount. Make sure to break down what's grants/scholarships (free money you don't pay back) versus loans (money you'll need to repay). Sometimes a school that offers less total aid might actually be giving you more "free" money, which could make it the better financial choice in the long run. Best of luck with your applications!