Aid, Decoded

FAFSA, CSS, and appeal letters in plain English.

Best from junior year onward. Before that there's nothing to file yet, and we'd rather not sell you a year of reading you can't use.

The FAFSA was rebuilt in 2023, and a lot of the advice still circulating describes the form it replaced. We track what each form actually asks, which questions families answer wrong, and how the ones who got a better award actually got it, with the letters that worked.

What we're building

• Line-by-line guidance for the forms, updated as the rules change.
• Real appeal letters that changed awards, anonymized.
• Deadline alerts for state and institutional aid.