FAFSA

Submission 7,925

Overview

FAFSA, an acronym for "Free Application for Federal Student Aid," is an annual form American college students and prospective college students may fill out to request financial assistance from the federal government in paying their college tuition. Online, the application is often joked about by college-aged Americans who hope to receive as much financial aid as possible.

Background

FAFSA introduced in 1992 amidst the Higher Education Amendments.^[1] A website was developed in 1997, leading to most of the applications being done online. In 2007, the US Government eliminated paper FAFSA forms save for special request orders. In 2017, the FAFSA form was first made available on October 1st (it had been up until then available on January 1st). The change was made to coincide with typical college application times. The deadline is the end of June the following year.

FAFSA applicants submit their financial and geographical backgrounds, and may submit the application to up to ten schools. Students then receive a Student Aid Report informing them of what sorts of financial aid they are eligible for.

Developments

"I'm Poor" Tweet

On June 24th, 2014, the Twitter account for FAFSA tweeted a reminder about the form using a GIF of Kristen Wiig from the film Bridesmaids saying "Help Me, I'm Poor." The account paired the GIF with a caption reading "If this is you, then you better fill out your FAFSA form" (shown below).

The tweet was criticized for being insensitive to students struggling with poverty. Twitter user @kckappus wrote, "not everyone who completes a FAFSA is poor and mocking those who are at or below FPL (Federal Poverty Line) is tasteless, offensive, and ignorant." (shown below, left). User @coolstoryharris joked he should receive maximum aid for the tweet (shown below, right).

The controversy was covered by multiple outlets including Hello Beautiful,^[2] NBC News,^[3] and Slate,^[4] who created satirical alternative memes for FAFSA to tweet (shown below).

I'm Telling FAFSA

In September of 2018, a series of jokes in which students threatened to "tell on" others to FAFSA about their various financial extravagances spread on Twitter. While it's unclear which tweet started the trend, early examples of the format appeared on September 28th, 2018. One of the most popular tweets from this day was posted by @ravewithrocha, gaining over 6,100 retweets and 22,000 likes (shown below).

Over the following several days, many more tweets were posted with the "I'm telling FAFSA" format, leading to coverage from The Daily Dot^[5] and Twitter Moments.^[6]