Senior families, if you want to apply for need based financial aid, you’ll need to fill out the FAFSA (free application for federal student aid), and you’ll need to submit it sometime between January and March (check the deadlines for your chosen colleges). Unfortunately, you can’t begin filling out the form until it goes live on January 1, 2012. But you can still get a head start if you’re the get-started-early type.
Here’s a link to a 2012-2013 FAFSA worksheet that will give you a good idea of the types of questions you’ll need to answer on the real form. This is not the actual FAFSA, and you won’t be able to submit it. But if a teacher gave her class a take-home practice test to get ready for a chemistry final, students would take it just to get an idea of what they knew and what they’d need to review before the real thing. This FAFSA worksheet is like your FAFSA practice test.