If you're a college student - and definitely if you're the parent of a college student - you know what the FAFSA is.

And more than likely, you say it through clenched teeth, with a scowl and a furrowed brow.

The FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the gateway through which the nation's college students get federal and state aid for college.

And it's no picnic. It's not a particularly long application, but it's detailed and murky and you have to do it every year.

The state offers some help, in the form of FAFSA Day, which is held this Saturday across the state.

Read on.

If you have a kid thinking about college, you've probably uttered "Fafsa." And you may have preceeded it with another word that starts with "F."

FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and it has grown in to a 100-question behemoth that some say is deterring those students who most need the help paying for college.

In a New York Times story, Education Secretary Arne Duncan notes that "You basically have to have a Ph.D to figure that thing out."

Yikes. 

Congress being Congress, it voted last year to streamline the application - while at the same time adding seven questions to it.

But as the Times story notes, President Obama and others have pledged to improve the form, or ditch it altogether.