The 2004 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:04), conducted for the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), collected comprehensive data regarding how students and their families pay for postsecondary education. The primary objective of NPSAS:04 is to produce reliable national estimates of characteristics related to financial aid for postsecondary students. NPSAS:04 also serves as the base year of data collection for the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS), which will follow a cohort of students from the start of their postsecondary education and collect further data from them in 2006 and 2009. For the first time, NPSAS:04 is being conducted as the student component study of the 2004 National Study of Faculty and Students (NSoFaS:04). The faculty component--the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:04)--is primarily a separate study, with the exception of institutional sampling and contacting. Historically, there has been considerable overlap in the institutions selected for participation in NPSAS and NSOPF; therefore, institutional sampling and contacting activities for both studies were coordinated in order to minimize response burden on institutions and to realize data collection efficiencies. This report only describes the methodology and findings of the NPSAS:04 field test, which took place during the 2002-03 school year. The NPSAS:04 field test was used to plan, implement, and evaluate methodological procedures, instruments, and systems proposed for use in the full-scale study scheduled for the 2003-04 school year. The methodology and findings of the NSOPF:04 field test are provided in a separate report. Appended are: (1) Technical Review Panel; (2)Data Collection Notification Materials; (3) Student Instrument Facsimile; (4) Computer-Assisted Data Entry (CADE) Facsimile; (5) Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) Training; and (6) CADE Verification Form. (Contains 51 tables and 8 figures.)