Completing forms can always be a huge task, but the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, is one form that’s well worth the time. FAFSA can help with a lot of financial aid, like grants, scholarships, loans, and work-study. File it for free at fafsa.ed.gov.

“I found out about FAFSA through AVID, because AVID keeps you on track for your college preparations. I think FAFSA is really helpful and anybody who needs financial aid should definitely put all their information in and go through FAFSA,” Senior using FAFSA Karyna Zaberezhna said.

FAFSA 2016 is available from Jan.1,16 to Jun.30,17. Keep in mind with FAFSA its first come first serve. States and individual colleges also have their own FAFSA deadlines. Missing them could cost you thousands of dollars in financial aid. These deadlines vary and some fall as early as February.

“A flaw about FAFSA is that if you were born in another country, but you have you American citizenship, they still need confirmation that you are a U.S. citizen,” Zaberezhna said.

FAFSA asks about 100 questions and can take 20 minutes to three hours to fill out. Gather all of the documents you need ahead of time, it will cut the time down to the 20 or 30 minutes.

“FAFSA could be a little bit more simple in my opinion. Unless you went to the library on February 4 to get help with your FAFSA form, the whole process would confuse you. It was really hard to find all the information within your taxes,” Zaberezhna said.

Here are documents needed to complete the 2016 FAFSA. Some applicants won’t need all of these documents.

1. Your Social Security number
2. Your Alien Registration Number (if you aren’t a U.S. citizen)
3. Your most recent federal income tax returns, W-2s and other records of money earned
4. Bank statements and records of your investments
5. Records of your untaxed income
6. An FSA ID to sign electronically (If you don’t already have one, create one at the Federal Student Aid website.)  

While completing the FAFSA, you’ll be asked to enter the school codes for up to 10 schools where you plan to apply. To find these codes, search the form itself by entering the city, state and name of each school. Codes can also be found through the federal school code search, or on each school’s website.

“I don’t know any other programs besides FAFSA that provide such good financial aid,” Zaberezhna said.