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Update: We found the problem! My daughter went back through the application and discovered she accidentally marked 'yes' to the question about being in legal guardianship. She was confused by the wording. We've submitted the correction and now I can see the parent portion is available for me to complete. Thank you everyone for your help!
Great news! Make sure you both electronically sign the corrected application when you're done. And if you have any issues with the parent section, come back and ask!
SO glad you got it fixed! Those questions are seriously confusing. My son almost made the same mistake.
Glad you were able to resolve this! This is such a common issue - the FAFSA dependency questions really need clearer wording. For anyone else reading this thread who might face similar issues, it's worth double-checking all the dependency questions before submitting. Even one misclick can completely change your aid eligibility. The legal guardianship question in particular seems to trip up a lot of students. Best of luck with the rest of your financial aid process!
For anyone else reading this thread later - I found that if you try to update any SSN issues, do it during non-peak hours (like very early morning). The system seems to work better then. Also, triple-check all dates of birth against official documents. And start the process EARLY! Don't wait until deadlines are close like I did.
That's great advice. I wish I'd started this whole process a month earlier. The stress of dealing with technical issues while application deadlines loom is terrible.
This is such a common issue this year! I'm a newcomer here but dealing with the exact same SSN display problem. What really helped me was contacting my daughter's college financial aid office directly - they were able to flag our application as having technical issues and gave us an extension on priority deadlines. They said they're processing a lot of these cases manually while the Department of Education works on the system bugs. Don't panic about the deadlines - most schools are being very understanding about FAFSA technical problems this cycle. Document everything and keep trying!
my sisters at kennesaw!!! they totaly do this every year, its super annoying. the loans will show up eventually but if ur really worried u can go to the financial aid office in person, they actually super helpful there!!!!
Don't stress too much about this! As someone who went through the exact same thing with my son at a Georgia school, this is totally normal timing. Most Georgia universities process aid in waves - state aid first (like your daughter's HOPE), then institutional scholarships, and federal aid comes last. Since you mentioned her acceptance was a bit late, that could definitely explain the delay. Federal loans almost always show up eventually, especially since your FAFSA was filed properly in January. If you're still not seeing anything by mid-July, that's when I'd start making calls. But honestly, with an August payment deadline, you've got plenty of time for everything to process normally.
UPDATE: Problem solved! Dad checked and he had accidentally started the process from his 2024-2025 dashboard. He sent a new invitation from the correct 2025-2026 application, and now I can see and access the right form. Thanks everyone for your help!
Great! Glad you got it sorted out. Make sure you submit before your school's priority deadline to maximize your aid eligibility.
lucky!! at least yours got fixed without having to call them 🙄
So glad to see this got resolved! This seems to be a really common issue this year. For anyone else running into this problem, the key takeaway is to make sure the parent starts from the correct year's application when sending the invitation. The FAFSA system doesn't seem to give clear error messages when there's a year mismatch, so it's easy to get stuck in the wrong application cycle. Definitely worth double-checking before spending hours troubleshooting!
Evelyn Xu
im so confused about all this FAFSA stuff... so are they changing the rules for next year or for this year or both?? and whats the difference between EFC and SAI anyway?? sorry if thats a dumb question lol
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Kayla Jacobson
•Not a dumb question at all! The EFC (Expected Family Contribution) is being renamed to SAI (Student Aid Index) as part of the FAFSA Simplification Act. For 2023-2024 aid year, they're still using the EFC formula for determining your aid, even though they might call it SAI in some communications. For the 2024-2025 aid year (which many people have already applied for), they're fully implementing the new SAI formula, which calculates financial need differently. The changes include different income protection allowances, handling of multiple students in college differently, and changes to how certain assets are counted. These emails people are getting about 2023-2024 are just them running their new system on old data, which unfortunately triggers automated notifications.
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Miguel Ramos
This has been happening to me too! I've gotten 4 of these emails in the past few days and was starting to panic thinking something was wrong with my financial aid. Thank you everyone for the explanations - it's so reassuring to know this is just a system-wide issue and not something I need to worry about. I did check my SAR like others suggested and nothing changed, so I'm going to stop stressing about it. Really wish the Department of Education would just send out a mass email explaining what's happening instead of leaving thousands of students confused and worried!
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