Editorial and Fact-Check Policy

FAFSA Easy Guide exists to make federal student aid understandable. This page explains how we research, write, and check our guides so you can trust what you read here.

We start from primary sources

Every guide is built from official sources first, especially StudentAid.gov and the Federal Student Aid Knowledge Center. When we state a number, like the maximum Pell Grant, a loan cap or a deadline, it comes from the official source for the stated award year, not from another website.

The Student Aid Index estimator is built the same way. It uses the published Formula A tables for 2026-27, the actual allowance and assessment-rate tables the Department of Education uses, rather than the simplified approximation most online estimators run on.

We fact-check the figures

Financial aid figures change every year, which makes a stale number the most likely error on a site like this. We review the amounts, rates and dates against the current official source, and where a figure is tied to an award year we say which year it applies to rather than leaving you to guess.

The estimator's arithmetic is covered by 19 assertions that run against the same JavaScript this site sends to your browser, not a separate copy that could drift from it. They pin the cases that are easy to get quietly wrong, including the negative-SAI floor and the point at which a family stops qualifying for Pell entirely.

We write in plain English

We aim for a sixth-grade reading level. We avoid jargon, and when a technical term is unavoidable, like the Student Aid Index or a contributor, we define it in plain words.

We are independent

We are not a financial aid office, a lender, a financial advisor or the U.S. Department of Education, and we do not sell financial products.

That matters more here than on most topics. A large share of what families find when they search for FAFSA help is published by private lenders, whose interest begins where federal aid runs out. The federal options are worth exhausting first: a Pell Grant is up to $7,395 for 2026-27 and is never repaid. We have no reason to hurry you past the federal options, so this site will tell you when the answer is to file and wait. Our guides are educational and are not a substitute for advice from your school's financial aid office, which has your actual file.

We correct mistakes

If you spot an error, email hello@theeasyguides.com. We check every report against the primary source and fix confirmed mistakes promptly.