FAFSA eligibility

Is my child
FAFSA-eligible?

One question decides it. Answer it below and Bloom's aid engine gives you one of three honest answers — yes, no, or not determined — and tells you which one you got.

Published by Taspara Solutions LLC, maker of Bloom · Published August 12, 2026 · Updated August 23, 2026

The one question

Nothing here is saved. No account, no email, no record — the answer is computed while the page renders and then it is gone.

Your child's immigration status

Add your household to estimate the aid index

Household income before tax (optional) People in the household (optional) Parents in the household (optional)

All three together produce a figure. Leave any of them blank and Bloom answers eligibility only — it will not fill in a household you did not describe, and the one it would fill in changes the number.

Choose a status and the engine answers below — the same engine that runs inside a family's account.

Why three answers

Unknown is not a determination.

Most eligibility checkers have two outputs. Ours has three, because a status Bloom does not recognise — or one you have not entered yet — is not evidence of anything. Reporting it as "not eligible" would be a claim, and reporting it as "eligible" would be a different claim. Both are the same mistake wearing different clothes.

So the third answer says what is actually true: the engine has no basis to decide, here is what it would need. That rule is not a courtesy on this page. It is enforced in the code the whole product runs on, which is why the checker above can only give you an answer it can stand behind.

Yes, with the figures behind it No, and what is still open Not determined, and why

Scope

What this answer covers.

FAFSA eligibility is a federal test on one person. It is narrower than families expect in one direction and wider in another.

It is about the student

A parent's immigration status is not on the form. A citizen child of two visa-holding parents files the FAFSA like anyone else; a green-card parent does not make an H-4 child eligible.

Income does not gate it

There is no income cut-off for filing. Income shapes the aid index and what Pell is worth — but a high-earning household still files, because loans, work-study and most college aid formulas start there.

It is not the only door

A "not eligible" here closes the federal lane and nothing else. Institutional grants, merit awards and some state programs run on their own rules and their own forms.

Bloom's estimate uses the simplified formula and the current Pell maximum. The FAFSA itself is where the number becomes real — verify at studentaid.gov.

Keep going

Two more free calculators.

Financial aid for H-1B and visa families — every status Bloom stores, with the engine's verdict on each.
In-state vs out-of-state: the real cost — both tuitions at 300 public universities, and why the published price is not your price.

Open to families

Eligibility is the first question, not the last one.

Inside a family account the same engine prices every college on your student's list — with their status, income, state and scores already in it.

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