It's about to get easier for students to figure out which colleges they can afford

College-bound students will be able to get earlier estimates of their eligibility for federal grants and loans next fall as the White House moves to simplify the way the government determines financial aid.

Instead of students waiting until January to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, long after many have applied to college, they will be able to complete the form three months earlier. Students will also be able to electronically retrieve and use tax information from two years earlier, rather than wait until tax season to complete the form known as the FAFSA.

President Barack Obama announced the changes on Monday at a town hall in Des Moines as part of a broader initiative to help families make more informed decisions about where to send their children to school. The changes to FAFSA arrive days after the White House redesigned an interactive website called College Scorecard to help families compare graduation rates, financial aid and alumni earnings. Taken together, the new score card and streamlined FAFSA are meant to give students a fuller picture of the costs and benefits of a college education.

For millions of students, receiving financial aid makes all the difference in paying for college. The government and colleges use the FAFSA to determine need-based and some merit-based aid. The sooner students turn in the form the better their chances of qualifying for more money since some states award aid on a first-come, first-served basis.

But the application process can be cumbersome as students have to wait for their parents' prior-year tax returns to complete the form, leading some to delay submission, which could ultimately cost them money.

"Getting the form filled out earlier will make a real difference for students who think they can't afford college," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said on Monday. "You have high-caliber students who don't apply to elite colleges because they think they can't afford them. Many elite colleges have larger endowments and can offer more financial aid ... we think some of that under-matching will go away."

Starting October 2016, students seeking federal financial aid for the 2017-2018 school year will be able to submit a FAFSA using their parents' 2015 tax returns, instead of waiting for 2016 tax documents. They will no longer have to estimate family income to answer up to 20 questions on the form. Since the information will come directly from the Internal Revenue Service, there will be no need for schools to spend hours verifying the data.

Not only will the changes reduce "paperwork burdens for students and costs for colleges," but it "also means students can apply for aid when or even before they apply to college," said Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS), an education nonprofit.

Advocacy groups like TICAS have for years pressed Congress and the White House to let families use older tax data to complete the FAFSA, but they've been met with resistance because of the expense. Making the process easier could encourage more students to apply for money and increase the overall cost of programs like the Pell Grant, money set aside for the neediest college students.

While the administration does not anticipate spending money to update the FAFSA, officials said Pell Grant costs could increase in 2017 by 1 percent, or $400 million, as more students apply for aid.

"This small step could have a huge impact," Duncan said. "We estimate that over the next several years hundreds of students will gain access to critical student aid each year because more will find it easier to apply."

Over the years, the administration has revamped the online FAFSA form so families can skip questions that are irrelevant to them and complete the application in an average of 20 minutes, as opposed to an hour.

"When I was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, the FAFSA was so complicated that you almost had to have a degree in accounting to complete it," Duncan said. "It was deeply troubling that so many hardworking, academically qualified students didn't apply to college because they thought they couldn't afford it ... which is why we've worked to revamp the FAFSA."

Millions of students still fail to fill out the form. Based on data from the Education Department, 2 million low-income students would have qualified for billions of dollars in Pell Grants had they filled out the FAFSA for the 2011-2012 academic year.