Financial Aid & Scholarships

Application Steps

FAFSA 2024-2025 IS OPEN!

  • The FAFSA application and delivery system is changing for the 2024-2025 school year. As a result, the FAFSA form was not made available until December 31, 2023.
  • We understand that the Department of Education’s delays and technical issues can cause concern for you and your family. We want to assure you that we are monitoring the situation and staying informed of any other possible delays or issues with the 2024-2025 FAFSA.
  • The target priority application date is February 28, 2024. Submit your application as early as possible to be considered for institutional aid.
  • Due to the FAFSA delays, the Office of Student Financial Aid will internally adjust our priority target date to include students who were unable to start their FAFSA by February 28th.
    • Please be assured that we will work with to consider your application “on-time”.
    • This may mean that you will have to submit a Priority Application Appeal form. Stay in contact with our office if you are concerned about your application date.
  • We ask that you complete your FAFSA as soon as possible so that we can prepare an award for you as soon as possible.
  • FAFSA Form
  • Watch “Preparing for the FAFSA form” playlist to understand what information and documents you’ll need to fill out the FAFSA form.
  • The 2022 income information will be used on the 2024-2025 application.
  • Be sure to create your FSA ID if you do not already have one.
  • Be sure that your contributors each create their own FSA ID as well. Even if a contributor does not have a Social Security number, they will be able to and will need to create FSA ID when the 2024-2025 form goes live.
  • Contributor is a new term being introduced for the 2024-2025 FAFSA form. A contributor is anyone (you, your spouse, your biological or adoptive parent, your parent’s spouse) who is required to provide information on the FAFSA form, sign the FAFSA form, and provide consent to have their federal tax information transferred directly from the IRS into the FAFSA form.
  • My contributor does not have an SSN and cannot complete the FSA ID and FAFSA. What should we do? With the changes to the 2024-25 FAFSA all contributors are now required to create an FSA ID, including contributors without an SSN. Unfortunately, this process is not working properly, and families have not been able to access the 2024-25 FAFSA.
  • The Department of Education is working on resolving this issue for the contributors without an SSN. We ask that students wait until the process has been fixed to file the FAFSA electronically. Paper FAFSAs will not be processed until after the electronic submissions are processed, thus the processing of the paper FAFSA applications will cause a delay. We encourage students to wait and complete the FAFSA online.
  • We will continue to monitor this situation. We will also adjust our internal process to accommodate students who experienced difficulties completing the FAFSA by February 28th.
  • For more detailed information on who a contributor is please see this page.
  • Watch this video “Who Is a Contributor on the 2024-25 FAFSA Form?” for more details.

Know the priority filing date

  • The UW Bothell has a priority date of January 15th each year. ** The 2024-2025 priority application date is February 28, 2024.
  • This means that the FAFSA or WASFA must be received by the processor on or before January 15th to be consider for priority funds. **February 28th for the 2024-2025 applications.
  • Use the University of Washington Federal School Code: 003798

**Please note that the Federal Processor for the FAFSA is located in the Central Time Zone and the FAFSA must be received by 10pm Pacific Time, February 28th to meet the priority date.

Apply for the FSA ID

  • Create an FSA ID by visiting Create a New FSA ID.
  • If you are a dependent student, your parents(contributors) will also create an FSA ID in order to sign your FAFSA.
  • A contributor is the student, student’s spouse, or student’s parent/stepparent.
  • For more information on who a contributor is for your FAFSA please go to this page, who is a contributor?

Gather financial information

  • For the 2024-2025 academic year, you will need income information for the 2022 tax year.

Submit your financial aid application

Receive your FAFSA Submission Summary

  • After you submit your application you will receive an email to access your Submission Summary information after you submit your application.
  • Review and make any corrections necessary to your FAFSA/WASFA.
  • Make sure that your name, date of birth, and social security number are accurate.

Award Financial Aid

  • The UW Office of Student Financial Aid will create an award package for you and you will receive an email instructing you to log into your myUW account.
  • By logging into your myUW account, you can review, accept and or reject your award offer.
  • Your financial aid award may be preliminary until we complete the review of your FAFSA/WASFA information. Please respond to any verification requests as soon as possible to ensure that you receive your final aid notification in a timely manner.
  • Accept your aid as directed even if your are requesting or expecting changes.
  • Unaccepted awards are subject to cancellation.