Introduction to Prepare for the FAFSA

In this lesson, you will gather and organize information in a spreadsheet to make filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid easier.

After high school, you may choose to continue your education.

Whether you decide to pursue a Bachelor's degree, an associate degree, vocational school, or some other kind of professional development, paying for school can be challenging.

As you consider your educational options, it's also important to think about how you will pay for them.

Using funds from personal savings, loans, scholarships, working while in school, or some combination, are all common approaches to covering the cost of tuition.

"The Free Application for Federal Student Aid," or "FAFSA" is a free online form to apply for financial help to pay for your education.

Types of aid the FAFSA covers include federal grants, work-study programs, state aid, and school aid.

Before you fill out the FAFSA, you will need to create an ID and a profile.

Visit the FAFSA website to do that on your own.

This lesson will help you organize your materials while you wait for your number to arrive.

As you complete this lesson, you will: create a spreadsheet to organize documents you'll need to complete the FAFSA, add the names of people you'll need to ask for important documents, add data validation to keep track of your documents, and add links to your spreadsheet for documents and other resources saved on Google Drive.

This lesson uses Google Sheets, but you could apply these skills and concepts in other spreadsheet applications or even on a piece of paper.

To work on this lesson, sign in to your Google account.

Open a new tab in your browser, and navigate to "google.com." If you do not have a Google account, pause the video and create one.

Then, open Google Drive, and create a new spreadsheet in Google Sheets.

Give your spreadsheet a title.

If you'd like, you can use accessibility features within Google Sheets, like a screen reader, to make it easier to read.

Click on the links next to this video to learn how to use this and other tools.

A spreadsheet can contain one or more sheets.

Naming each sheet can help you stay organized, especially if you decide to add more sheets later on to collect college or deadline information, for example.

Now, it's your turn: log in to your Google account, create a new spreadsheet and rename it, and name the sheet.