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This is definitely one of the recognized issues with the new FAFSA system. The good news is that you can verify the official status by looking at the
Thank you, this is incredibly helpful! I just checked and the processed date is indeed after our last correction (we had to fix a small issue with our W-2 reporting). I feel much better now knowing that the system is working as it should, even if the communication is confusing.
the whole fafsa system is such garbage this year!!! they remove questions without telling anyone, the website crashes constantly, and when you finally submit everything they take FOREVER to calculate your SAI. i submitted in JANUARY and still don't have a final SAI number. how are we supposed to make college decisions like this???
Completely agree. The rollout of the simplified FAFSA has been nothing short of disastrous. They weren't ready for the launch, and students are suffering the consequences. All the promised "simplification" has just created more confusion and technical problems.
EXACTLY!!! and colleges cant even see half the applications that WERE submitted successfully. my daughter might lose scholarships because of their incompetence!!
Just wanted to update and thank everyone for the helpful responses! I contacted my daughter's financial aid office directly and they confirmed that the scholarship question was indeed removed from the new FAFSA. They also said that since her scholarship was non-taxable and paid directly to the school, there's nothing additional we need to report. Such a relief! They mentioned they're getting tons of calls about "missing questions" from people familiar with the old FAFSA format.
This exact thing happened to me with my son's applications! It was driving me CRAZY. Turns out the problem wasn't his birthdate at all - it was because his high school had submitted his name to the FAFSA system with his middle name included, but we were applying with just his first and last name. Once we added his middle name exactly as the high school had it, the system accepted everything. Maybe check with your daughter's high school counselor to see how they submitted her info to the FAFSA system?
Any luck resolving this? One other thing to check - make sure the parent info (your name, SSN, etc.) is entered EXACTLY the same on both the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 forms. Sometimes these validation errors happen because of parent data mismatches, not student information.
Update: We got it resolved! It turned out to be the craziest thing - her high school had recorded her birth month incorrectly in their system (they had March instead of May). When they sent the batch data to the federal student aid system, it created this conflict. I had to have her high school update their records, then wait 48 hours, and finally the 2023-2024 FAFSA went through. Thanks everyone for your help!
OMG yes they need to invite u again every year and make sure ur using the EXACT same email address as last year!!! We made that mistake where my daughter invited me with my gmail instead of my work email that I used before and it created this WHOLE mess where I had two different contributor profiles and the system got all confused and we had to start over 😫
Thank you for the warning! I'll double-check which email I used last year to make sure we use the same one. Definitely don't want to deal with that kind of headache.
Just to clarify one more thing - when your student sends the contributor invitation this year, you'll have 14 days to complete your section before the invitation expires. They can always resend it if needed, but it's good to be aware of that timeline.
I didn't know about the 14-day limit! Definitely good information to have. I'll make sure to complete it promptly once I get the invitation. Thanks again for all your help!
And sometimes the emails are slow to arrive! My daughter sent the invitation and it took almost 24 hours for me to receive it. Just another thing to be aware of.
Jasmine Quinn
lol welcome to fafsa hell we all live here now
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Hannah Flores
UPDATE: I finally got through to someone at FSA using that Claimyr service (totally worth it btw). Turns out there was a mismatch between my dad's reported income and what they had on file from the IRS. The weird thing is we used the data transfer tool so it should have matched automatically! The agent manually noted the correction and said processing should resume within 3-5 business days. Just wanted to update in case anyone else runs into this problem!
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Victoria Charity
•That's a common issue this year - the Data Retrieval Tool is pulling the right numbers, but the system is sometimes comparing it to the wrong year's tax data. Glad you got it sorted out! Make sure you keep checking your status because occasionally they need additional verification after the first issue is resolved.
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