We went through this last year with my son. What helped us was submitting an appeal letter with specific documentation about expenses FAFSA doesn't consider - like elder care costs for my mom, some medical bills not covered by insurance, and major home repairs we had to do. The school ended up giving us an additional $5k per year in institutional grants after the appeal. Definitely worth trying!

u might wanna check scholarships too my sister got like 5k from local organizations and her dads work had a scholarship for employees kids. every bit helps when ur looking at that much money

This is a known issue with the redesigned FAFSA. Here's what you need to understand: 1. Yes, both parents' information is required for an accurate SAI calculation if both provide significant support, regardless of marital status. 2. The system should not have automatically submitted after just one contributor completed their portion - this is a technical error affecting many families. 3. The correction function should be available to your daughter 3-7 days after initial submission. She needs to login, select "Correct Your FAFSA" and then add you as an additional contributor. 4. Most important: While waiting for the correction ability to become available, contact all the financial aid offices at schools your daughter is applying to and explain the situation. They may provide temporary deadline extensions while you resolve this issue. 5. Once both contributors' information is included, her SAI will be recalculated, potentially changing her aid eligibility significantly. Documentation is critical - save screenshots showing the technical error, keep the invitation emails, and document all communication attempts with FSA.

Just wanted to add that if your daughter can't access the correction function after a week, and you can't reach FSA by phone, have her visit her school's financial aid office in person. They have dedicated channels to help resolve FAFSA issues that aren't available to the general public. They can sometimes initiate a correction request through their institutional portal.

It worked for us! My husband was super skeptical too. But it connected us to a real FSA agent who fixed our issue. I'm not sure if it works for every government agency, but it definitely worked for Federal Student Aid.

Update: We called FSA this morning (after trying for two days!) and found out there was a small discrepancy between how her name appears on her Social Security card and how she entered it when creating her FSA ID. Apparently even a missing middle initial can cause the verification to hang! The rep helped us correct it, and we were told the verification should complete within 1-2 days now. Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions!

has anyone else noticed that the parent contribution calculator seems WAY off this year?? our family income didn't change much but our expected contribution nearly doubled with this new SAI system 😩

just tried the diff browser trick and IT WORKED!!!! chrome kept freezing but edge let me get all the way through my parent corrections! THANK U!!!!!

Update us when you figure it out! My daughter will be applying next year and I'm trying to learn all the potential pitfalls.

UPDATE: You guys were right! I just checked this morning and now there's a verification request showing on my portal. They want me to verify my dependency status and submit my tax return transcript. The weird thing is they're still calling it a "correction" in the system even though nothing was actually incorrect. Thanks for all your help - at least now I know what I need to do!