MALTA – The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is now open for the 2019-2020 academic year.

The FAFSA is the basic building block of all financial aid packaging for college students across the U.S. Filing the FAFSA is the first step in determining what federal or state financial aid a student is eligible for, including Pell Grants, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (SEOG) Federal Direct Student Loans and the Illinois Monetary Award Program (MAP Grants). Filing early may qualify a student for funding from a wider variety of financial aid sources. The Illinois MAP grant, for example, has a limited amount of funds to award and is dispersed in a “first come, first served” format, making filing the FAFSA early a necessity in qualifying for MAP funds.

Cyndi Stonesifer, director of financial aid at Kishwaukee College, stated, “for anyone planning to attend Kishwaukee College or any other college or university in the 2019-2020 academic year should consider filling out the FAFSA. The 2019-20 FAFSA will use information from the 2017 Tax Forms – that were completed and filed six months ago. In addition, it allows students to easily use the IRS Retrieval Tool which automatically links the filed tax forms with the FAFSA form. It makes filing for FAFSA a lot easier.”

Kishwaukee College is planning to hold its annual FAFSA Completion Night on Oct. 16 from 5-7 p.m. in Room A1345 at the College.

The FAFSA Completion Night allows students and their parents an opportunity to fill out the FAFSA form with assistance from financial aid professionals from Kishwaukee College.

Students should bring their 2017 income information, including their 2017 Federal Tax information or Federal 1040 tax forms (if filed) or W-2 forms. Students and parents should know their social security numbers and driver’s license or alien registration numbers. Prior to attending the FAFSA Completion Night, students filing the FAFSA for the first time and parents should go to www.studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/filling-out/fsaid to create their Federal Student Aid ID (FSA ID) which is required to sign the FAFSA electronically.

For more information on the FAFSA, visit www.fafsa.ed.gov/ or visit www.kish.edu/financial-aid.