How to add more than 10 schools to the FAFSA

We recently published our 2016-17 Guide to the FAFSA. While it covers many topics, including the new FSA ID, it doesn't mention a common question of families completing the form. For this, we wanted to devote an individual post.

When families are adding schools to the FAFSA, they quickly realize they are only able to account for 10 institutions. Double digits may be more than enough for some families, but others are considering more than 10 schools.

So what do you do? Do you have to pick the top 10 schools from your list and move on? Is FAFSA forcing you to whittle down your pool of options?

No and nope.

You will select 10 schools from your list, with no rhyme or reasoning other than recommended submission deadlines posted by the schools, complete the remaining FAFSA questions and submit the form. Soon after submitting, you will receive the SAR or Student Aid Report. By receiving this you have been provided the green light to move onto the second step of this process.

This step provides three options. You can manually edit the FAFSA by logging back in and making corrections. This is what we recommend to families we work with. If you'd prefer, you can call the other schools directly, or even the Federal Student Aid Information Center, and have them complete the process for you after answering a few questions.

If you want to manually edit the FAFSA, here's what you need to do. After logging back into the FAFSA and selecting that you'd like to make corrections, you will go back to the screen that allows you to add/remove schools. First, you'll be removing the number of remaining schools that have yet to receive your FAFSA.

So, if you have submitted the FAFSA to 10 schools but have 16 totals schools you are considering, you'll want to remove six of the original 10 schools.

This will allow you the correct number of open spots that you can then fill with the remaining schools on your list. You will add these schools, either through the search feature or by looking up the school's FAFSA code, and then you'll finalize the process by submitting the FAFSA yet again.

What if you have more than 20 schools? You guessed it. Simply rinse and repeat after you receive your updated SAR.

It's important to remember that you'll need to repeat this process if you make further corrections to your FAFSA or use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool in order to submit your completed tax information.