NEW YORK (AP) -- The Free Application for Federal Student Aid for the 2026-27 school year has officially opened.

Despite the U.S. government shutdown, the Education Department will continue to process the FAFSA.

If you plan to attend college next year, Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, recommends that you fill it out as soon as you can.

If it's your first time applying, here's what you need to know:

The FAFSA is a free government application that uses students' and their families' financial information to determine whether they can get financial aid from the federal government to pay for college.

The application will send a student's financial information to the schools they are interested in attending. The amount of financial aid a student receives depends on each institution.

The application is also used to determine eligibility for other federal student aid programs, like work-study and loans, as well as state and school aid. Sometimes, private, merit-based scholarships also require FAFSA information to determine if a student qualifies.

The FAFSA application for the 2026-2027 must be submitted by June 30, 2027. However, each state has different deadlines for financial aid. For example, California has a March 2, 2026, deadline and Kansas has an April 15, 2026, deadline for state financial aid programs.

You can check your state's deadline here.

This year's application rolled out Sept. 24, a week ahead of the anticipated Oct. 1 launch.

"This is a really welcomed change and hopefully it will be a turning point where we can expect to see a FAFSA every year by or even before October 1st," Desjean said.

The first step in the process is to create a studentaid.gov account and gather the following documents:

-- Social Security number

-- Driver's license number

-- Alien registration number, if you are not a U.S. citizen

-- Federal income tax returns, W-2s and other records of money earned

-- Bank statements and records of investments

-- Records of untaxed income

Anyone planning to attend college next year should fill out the form. Both first-time college students and returning students can apply.

"Even if you think you won't qualify, the worst thing that can happen is that you might get finance aid you didn't know you qualified for," Desjean said.

Students and parents can use the federal student aid estimator to get an early approximation of their financial package.

If you are filing as a dependent student, you'll need to provide the financial information of at least one parent. Parents need to create their own FSA IDs. When your parents fill out the application, they can manually input their tax return information or use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool.

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