If you're fac­ing the dreaded-yet-necessary beme­hoth of an appli­ca­tion known as FAFSA (the Free Appli­ca­tion for Fed­eral Stu­dent Aid), you prob­a­bly have some ques­tions. For many peo­ple, fil­ing for taxes is a sim­pler process than ensur­ing that the FAFSA is com­pleted accu­rately and thoroughly.

The cum­ber­some umpteen-long FAFSA appli­ca­tion process has been an easy tar­get for com­plain­ing about the dif­fi­cul­ties of secur­ing higher edu­ca­tion, but alas, Sal­lie Mae (one of the biggest stu­dent loan providers) has come to stu­dents' aid… For secur­ing that finan­cial aid.

Brand-spankin' new, Sal­lie Mae's Feb­ru­ary Resource Cen­ter is chock-full of advice, instruc­tional videos, Twitter/Facebook links and even a chance to win $10,000. Par­tic­u­larly help­ful, the site's list of com­mon finan­cial aid myths dis­pel many notions that often pre­vent otherwise-eligible stu­dents for apply­ing for money for college.

When I applied for FAFSA in 2004, I relied on my dad's independent-business-owning tax knowl­edge and school coun­selors for help, but I still wasn't clear about the mean­ing of those end­less num­ber fields and cal­cu­la­tions. While I'd much rather see high school courses begin to offer more classes geared toward life skills (read: teach us how to fill out bureau­cratic forms), Sal­lie Mae's online tuto­r­ial would have helped leagues. Leagues, I say.

For more up-to-date help with FAFSA, check out a 7-part FAFSA FAQ series on the New York Times's blog, The Choice, writ­ten by the founder of FinAid.org, an online self-help guide to fund­ing your col­lege education.

Happy FAFSA-ing.