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???

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.

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 😫

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.

Since time is critical, I'd recommend pursuing multiple solutions simultaneously:\n\n1. Follow up on getting the provisional/conditional aid letter from financial aid\n2. Prepare the alternative documentation (bank statements, affidavit of support)\n3. Contact the Spanish consulate to confirm exactly what alternatives they'll accept\n4. Have your son check his SAI status daily and call FSA if there's any change\n\nThe good news is that once your FAFSA does process, things move quickly. Our SAI finally came through about 10 days before my daughter's visa appointment, and her school produced the final aid package within 48 hours after that. It was stressful right up to the end, but it worked out.\n\nOne more tip: when your son goes to his appointment, have him bring documentation of the FAFSA delays (news articles, official notices) to show this is a nationwide issue affecting many students. Sometimes this context helps the consular officers understand it's not just poor planning on his part.

Thank you for the thorough plan of action! I'm definitely going to pursue all these paths at once. The idea of bringing news articles about the FAFSA delays is brilliant - I hadn't thought of documenting that this is a nationwide problem. I'm feeling more hopeful now that we have some concrete steps to take!

UPDATE FOR EVERYONE: The Department of Education just announced yesterday that they're aware of this notification glitch and are working on a fix. According to their statement, applications that appear complete when you log in ARE actually complete in their system, and the notifications can be ignored. They expect to resolve the issue within 2 weeks. In the meantime, they recommend checking your actual application status by logging in rather than relying on the automated notifications.

UPDATE: Problem solved! After manually going through every section again and hitting the final submit button (which I had missed before), the system finally acknowledged everything as complete. The notifications stopped after about 24 hours, and we received our SAI calculation this morning. For anyone else experiencing this - make sure you hit that final submit button after the IRS data retrieval, even if all sections show complete with green checkmarks!

Financial aid counselor here - just to clarify some timeline expectations for the 2025-2026 FAFSA cycle: - "Processed" status means your application was received and initial checks were completed - SAI (Student Aid Index) calculation typically takes 3-10 business days after "processed" status appears - Schools don't receive your information until the SAI is calculated - If your application is selected for verification (about 35% are), the SAI will be delayed until that process is complete If you're approaching the 10 business day mark, I'd recommend contacting Federal Student Aid directly. Also make sure to check both the student and parent portals, as sometimes the information appears in one but not the other due to access permission differences.

UPDATE: Thank you everyone for your helpful advice! I had my daughter log into her student account and the SAI was actually there! It wasn't showing in my parent portal for some reason. For anyone else with this issue - definitely check both accounts. I appreciate all your help!