Your current high school senior won’t be affected for his freshman year, but he will be in 2017, as will your high school junior. The earliest you can submit the FAFSA for your senior is January 2016. But when your junior starts applying to colleges, you’ll be able to submit the FAFSA in October 2016 — three months earlier. One of the reasons for this change is to give the colleges more time to for your financial aid consideration, said Steven Sirot, co-founder of College Benefits Research Group (CBRG) in Roseland. READ MORE.