The Department Seeks Voluntary Participation In FAFSA Beta Test, Providing Details On the Requirements To Apply For Participation

Overview
Building on yesterday’s announcement from the Department of Education on the planned rollout of the 2025-26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA); the Department posted an electronic announcement (EA) entitled “Availability of 2025-26 FAFSA Betas 2-4 Interest Form” (fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/library/electronic-announcements/2024-09-11/availability-2025-26-fafsa-betas-2-4-interest-form) outlining the entities who can apply to participate in the Beta Test and a survey (“intent form”) that interested entities must submit to be considered for participation.

The EA once again reiterates the Department’s stated goal of having a finalized FASFA form available for all students and institutions by December 1, 2024 and provides new details on how interested entities can apply to be part in the second, third, or fourth phase of the Beta tests taking place between October 1st and December 1st.

The EA explains:

For Beta 1, the Department is working with a small number of CBOs that can recruit students to participate in in-person FAFSA completion sessions, many of whom will apply to the same institution of higher education, which will download and test the students’ ISIRs.

The goals of Betas 2-4 include testing at a larger scale and with a wide variety of CBOs, high schools, institutions, and state agencies. The number of students in each stage is expected to grow to over 1,000 in Beta 2 and to over 10,000 in Betas 3 and 4.

Key 2025-26 FAFSA Beta Test Application Process Details
For institutions considering participation, the EA describes the entities they are hoping to have participate, and the expectations of the institutions as well. The two excerpts below give an overview…

One of FSA’s goals is to include students from many different student populations to test a wide array of FAFSA form use cases. FSA will select organizations to include different types of high schools and different types of institutions, such as community colleges, public universities, private colleges, and minority-serving institutions (MSIs).

FSA expects institutions to:
* recruit the target number of students and their contributor(s) for each beta testing period to fill out and submit the 2025-26 FAFSA form:
+ Beta 2 – At least 200 students with their contributor(s)
+ Betas 3-4 – At least 500 students with their contributor(s)
* download ISIRs into their financial aid management system
* dedicate staff to testing the ISIRs according to criteria FSA specifies, such as: verifying the accuracy of SAIs and Pell eligibility amounts, identifying inconsistencies in comment codes and data fields, flagging missing or erroneous values, and determining whether aid can be packaged correctly; and
* provide feedback to FSA on the accuracy of ISIR processing as soon as possible, ideally by the seventh day of the beta stage window.

FSA may include an institution that cannot commit to recruiting the expected number of students if necessary to meet our goals of working with a broad range of institution types and reaching a variety of target populations.