I called our university's financial aid office yesterday about my son's delayed SAI, and they said they're accepting screenshots of the "FAFSA submitted" confirmation page as proof that students have completed their financial aid application requirements by the priority deadline. Then they'll process the actual awards once the SAI comes through. Might be worth asking your daughter's schools if they have a similar policy in place.

In response to your question about contacting FSA directly - yes, it can help, especially if your daughter's application might have an issue that's not displaying in the system. Many families are discovering their applications are stalled for verification or inconsistencies that aren't being clearly communicated. If you do manage to speak with an agent, ask them to check if the application is truly "in process" or if it's flagged and waiting for additional information. Also ask them to verify that all parental contributions and signatures are properly recorded in the system. By the way, most colleges have established workarounds for these delays, so don't panic about the deadlines. Just make sure your daughter communicates proactively with each school's financial aid office.

whats ur SAI number? if its right on the border for pell eligibility maybe different schools interpret it differently????

UPDATE: Finally got through to Monmouth's financial aid office! You all were right - it was an error on their part. They said with the new FAFSA system this year, some of the federal aid wasn't automatically populating in their award letters. They're sending me a revised package that includes the $740 Pell Grant. The Green Lawn Grant is staying too - it's their institutional aid. Thanks everyone for your help and encouragement to follow up on this!

Has anyone mentioned that they now want MUCH more investment information???? Like literally every single account. We had to report my husband's small employee stock purchase plan that we'd completely forgotten about and it delayed our whole application by THREE WEEKS because we had to get special valuation statements. They even wanted information about a tiny inheritance my husband received that was only $5,400! Ridiculous how they penalize families who save responsibly while giving massive aid to families who never bothered to save a cent for college.

Just went through this with my kid who's a freshman now. I recommend taking screenshots of EVERYTHING during the FAFSA submission process. Our confirmation page never arrived by email even though the system said it sent it. Also, make sure your daughter lists all potential schools on the FAFSA when she first submits it - adding schools later triggers additional verification steps sometimes. And weirdest thing - after submitting, login to the studentaid.gov account every few days to check status. They don't always send notifications when there are problems or if they need more info. We almost missed a verification request because the email went to spam.

btw make sure u didnt get any FAFSA verification emails. my cousins application got flagged for verification and she had no idea until she checked her junk mail folder. if that happens the schools wont process ur aid package even if they got the fafsa

Verification is fairly common - about 25% of all FAFSA applications get selected. It can be random or triggered by certain factors like missing information or discrepancies. If you were selected, you'd receive an email from Federal Student Aid and would also see a verification flag when you log into studentaid.gov. To directly answer your original question: by this time in the application cycle (mid-cycle), most schools are receiving FAFSA data within 7-10 days after processing, though some reports indicate 10-14 days this year due to the new FAFSA rollout. As long as you can prove you submitted before the priority deadline, most schools will honor your place in line for institutional aid.

i think you're overthinking this lol. just put her current school for now then update it later if she decides to transfer. that's what we did with my son. the whole updating schools thing takes like 2 minutes online. way easier than trying to predict where she might go.

The whole FAFSA system is RIDICULOUS! Why should we have to guess where our kids are going??? My daughter changed her mind THREE TIMES last year about where she wanted to transfer. And each time we had to update the stupid FAFSA AND contact both financial aid offices AND resubmit verification documents! The entire process is designed to make you want to GIVE UP on getting any aid at all!!!