Changes are coming for the FAFSA, and they’re sounding good! Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the government has developed a new plan so that the FAFSA will be available in October instead of January, meaning students and their parents will know earlier what kind of financial help they can receive.

Cory Turner, the author of the NPR article, explains the IRS data-retrieval tool that lets students and parents log into the IRS site through FAFSA and have much of the form pre-populate for them. However, that tool couldn’t help much because the FAFSA asks for tax information from the prior year before taxes have been filed. To make things easier, the FAFSA will instead require tax information from the “prior-prior” year.

These changes are planned to take effect in October 2016.

Read more from this NPR article.

Turner, Cory. “Obama Makes College Aid Application Earlier and Easier.” NPR. NPR News, 14 Sept. 2015. Web. 30 Sept. 2015.