UPDATE: You were all right about needing to be persistent! I used that Claimyr service to get through to Federal Student Aid, and they confirmed the loans were definitely disbursed to the school 2 months ago. Then I forwarded that confirmation to both the financial aid office AND the bursar's office, and CC'd the dean of students like someone suggested. Got a call back within 3 hours! Turns out there was a "system flag" on my son's account because they thought he was only half-time enrolled (he's full-time). They fixed it immediately and the loans just posted to his account this morning. The $17,800 balance is now zeroed out! Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions!

Glad to hear it's resolved! For future reference, here's why this enrollment status issue affected your loan disbursement: 1. Federal student loans require at least half-time enrollment to disburse 2. Parent PLUS loans are connected to the student's enrollment status 3. When a system incorrectly flags enrollment status, it triggers an automatic hold on all aid This is a common issue that often requires exactly the escalation path you took. Great job advocating for your son!

Update for anyone with the same problem: I logged into my FSA ID account directly and found one son's application but not the other. My son checked and realized he had misspelled my email address when entering me as a contributor (he put .con instead of .com 🤦‍♀️). He fixed it and resent the invitation. Still no email, but when I logged in again this morning, both applications showed up in my dashboard! I've completed the parent contribution section for both of them now. \n\nSo yes, you CAN go ahead without waiting for the invite email! And triple check that your student entered your email correctly.

Thanks for the update! Glad you got it figured out! The .con vs .com thing is such an easy mistake to make and causes so much stress!

my husand and i both made fsa ids but then we got confused because the form asks for the "parent who provides more financial support" which seemed weird for us since we file taxes jointly and support our kid equally?? so we just put me as parent 1 since i make slightly more. did we mess up???

UPDATE: Thanks everyone for the help! We both created our FSA IDs (with different emails as suggested) and completed our daughter's FAFSA last night. The form did ask for our joint tax information, and then required both of us to sign at the end. The estimated SAI showed up immediately after submission, which I wasn't expecting - that was helpful. Thanks again for clearing up my confusion!

i just went through this last week! the thing that worked for me was using my phone data instead of wifi to access the site. sounds weird but apparently some wifi networks block certain authentication protocols. dont ask me why but it fixed it when nothing else worked

UPDATE: I got in! That Claimyr service actually worked - I got through to an FSA agent in about 15 minutes. Turns out there was a typo in my email (it had an extra period that I never noticed), so verification emails were going nowhere. Once they updated my email in the system, I was able to log in with the regular 2-step verification. Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions!

Quick tip that might help others: For anyone dealing with these delays and needing to make college financial decisions, contact your school's financial aid office directly. Many colleges have implemented provisional aid award processes specifically to deal with the FAFSA processing backlog this year. They can often use estimated SAI calculations based on tax return copies you provide directly to them while waiting for official FAFSA processing. This won't help with the tax refund delay, but it can at least keep your college financial planning on track.

My friend works at the IRS (not supposed to tell me this stuff but whatever) and she says they're prioritizing processing people who OWE money first, then doing refunds after. So if you're getting a refund, you're automatically at the back of the line. Has nothing to do with FAFSA - just how they maximize revenue collection.