As someone new to this community, I wanted to add that it's really important to understand the difference between "homeless" for FAFSA purposes versus other definitions. For financial aid, a student can be considered homeless even if they have temporary housing (like your situation with him couch surfing and now staying with you). One thing that might help is contacting your local Continuum of Care organization - every community has one, and they coordinate homeless services in the area. They often have staff who are familiar with educational documentation needs and might be able to provide a letter or connect you with someone who can help establish his homeless status. Also, if he attended high school in your area, it might be worth reaching out to the district's homeless liaison even though he graduated. Sometimes they can provide retroactive documentation if they have records of his situation while he was a student. The McKinney-Vento Act requires every school district to have a homeless liaison, so there should be someone designated to help even if it takes some digging to find the right person. You're doing an incredible thing helping him navigate this system - it can feel really daunting, but having someone advocating for him makes such a huge difference in the outcome!

As someone new to this community, I wanted to share a resource that really helped when I was assisting a student in a similar situation. The National Center for Homeless Education has a FAFSA toolkit specifically designed for homeless and unaccompanied youth that breaks down the process step by step. You can find it on their website at nche.ed.gov. One thing I learned that might save you time is that when working with multiple schools, it's helpful to ask each financial aid office upfront what their typical processing time is for dependency overrides. Some schools can turn these around in a few weeks, while others might take 2+ months. Knowing this can help you prioritize which schools to contact first, especially if any have earlier enrollment deadlines. Also, keep in mind that once he gets his dependency override approved, he should be eligible for work-study programs and other campus employment opportunities that are often reserved for students with high financial need. These can provide both income and valuable work experience while he's in school. You're being such an advocate for him during a really challenging time - the fact that he has someone stable in his corner who's willing to help navigate this bureaucracy is going to make all the difference in his educational future!

When my son was applying we put the wrong 401k balance and had to fix it after submitting. The SAI went up :( but at least we didn't get in trouble later! It's confusing tho because some money like retirement doesn't even count toward FAFSA but they still ask about it? Why ask if it doesn't count?? The whole system makes no sense to me.

Don't panic - this is totally fixable! I went through the exact same thing last year with a similar income typo. Here's what I learned: definitely make the correction ASAP through studentaid.gov, and yes your SAI will automatically recalculate within about a week. The $10,000 difference will likely increase your SAI some, but it's way better to be accurate than to have verification issues later. Also, since you mentioned being accepted to schools already, I'd recommend sending a quick email to their financial aid offices just letting them know you're making a correction so they're not surprised when your SAI changes. They deal with this stuff all the time and won't think anything suspicious about it. You're being responsible by fixing it proactively!

Quick update on this issue - the Department of Education just released a statement yesterday acknowledging the signature correction bug affecting some FAFSA applications. They specifically mentioned this dashboard disappearing issue and confirmed applications are NOT lost. They're implementing a fix this weekend, and affected users should see their applications return to their dashboards by Monday. If you don't see it by then, that's when you should contact them directly.

This exact same thing happened to my son back in February! The signature error followed by the complete dashboard disappearance is definitely a system glitch. We ended up waiting it out for about 3 days and everything magically reappeared. In the meantime, I called his top choice school's financial aid office and they confirmed they could still see his FAFSA submission on their end even though our dashboard was blank. So definitely don't panic and resubmit right away - that could create more headaches. The system is frustrating but your daughter's application is most likely still there!

Update: I submitted the correction last night and it went through! The status now shows "Processing Correction." Thanks everyone for your help. I also emailed my financial aid office just to be safe. Fingers crossed this doesn't delay anything too much!

Great to hear you got the correction submitted! Just wanted to add for anyone else reading this - when you're in "Processing Correction" status, it typically takes 3-5 business days for the updated SAI to appear. You can check your status by logging back into studentaid.gov and looking at the "My FAFSA" section. Once it's processed, your schools will automatically receive the updated information. Since you emailed your financial aid office too, you should be all set. The May 1 deadline shouldn't be an issue as long as your original submission was before the priority date!

Welcome to the community! I'm dealing with almost the exact same issue right now - been locked out of my FSA account for about 10 days trying to complete a Parent PLUS loan for my daughter. The email verification loop is driving me absolutely crazy! After reading through this thread, I'm realizing I probably have the duplicate account issue too since I helped my older son with his FAFSA back in 2020. It's so frustrating that the system can't handle parents helping multiple children over the years without creating these conflicts. I'm definitely going to try the agent route first based on everyone's success stories here. @profile1 your update about the duplicate records with different email formats (middle initial vs no middle initial) sounds exactly like what might be happening to me. Thank you all for sharing your experiences - it's such a relief to know I'm not alone in this and that there actually are solutions!

Welcome to the community! I'm going through the exact same nightmare right now with my daughter's Parent PLUS loan application. I've been stuck in that email verification loop for about a week and was starting to think I was losing my mind! Reading through everyone's experiences here is such a relief - I had no idea this was such a widespread issue. The duplicate FSA ID problem makes so much sense now. I helped my older daughter with her FAFSA three years ago and I bet that's causing conflicts in the system. @profile1 thank you for sharing your update about getting it resolved - knowing that the agent could fix both the security lock AND email verification issues in just 5 minutes gives me hope! I'm definitely going to try contacting FSA directly first before attempting to create a new account. This thread is a lifesaver for stressed parents dealing with these technical issues!