Creating a StudentAid.gov account or FSA ID shouldn’t be an obstacle for students and contributors when completing the FAFSA.
The FSA ID is a “key first step” to completing the FAFSA, and Federal Student Aid (FSA) has made updates over the past few years to make the process easier. Aaron Lemon-Strauss, Executive Director of the FAFSA Program, recently announced some updates to the process coming in December 2025.
Some of the key updates will focus on making account creation faster, reducing abandonment rate, and reducing the number of calls to the Financial Aid Information Center for assistance with the StudentAid.gov account.
Other changes that will be made include reducing the number of required fields from 23 to 12, streamlining the steps which would reduce the number of pages from eight to six, verifying email and phone numbers as they are entered instead of at the end of the process, and offering the option to complete the process in Spanish at the beginning of the process.
FSA plans to release updated screenshots on the process so that schools and other organizations can update the resources that they provide to students and families.
