My nephew had a negative SAI too and ended up getting a full ride to his state school! But here's the thing - his roommate ALSO had a negative SAI and got much less aid at the same exact school. Turns out his roommate's parents had a lot of home equity and retirement savings that didn't count on FAFSA but did matter to the school's internal aid formula. So weird how it works!

dont forget to look for school-specific scholarships too!! my negative SAI got me automatically considered for some need-based scholarships but i had to apply separately for others

so happy for u!!! we just finished ours too after weeks of trying. the relief is REAL. good luck to ur son with his college journey!

Update: We finally got the SAI calculation and thankfully it looks correct! For anyone still stuck - seriously try the contributor switch. And start the process WAY earlier than you think you need to next year.

Another important tip: when you receive the contributor invitation and set up your FSA ID, be extremely careful with the personal information you enter. If there's even a slight mismatch between your information (name, DOB, SSN) and what's on file with the Social Security Administration, your identity verification will fail. This is one of the most common issues parents face with the new FAFSA process. If you have a hyphenated last name or use your middle name, be especially careful to enter your legal name exactly as it appears on your Social Security card.

Update: My daughter added me as a contributor yesterday evening, and I received the email invitation this morning! I've created my FSA ID and started working on the parent section. The IRS Data Retrieval Tool worked perfectly for importing our tax information - much easier than I expected. Thanks everyone for the guidance!

My twins both submitted FAFSA on the same day (Jan 3) and one had to resign but the other didnt. Makes no sense to me!! The financial aid office at State College told me it depends on what sections of the form had calculation errors. Like if you had certain types of income or family situations those were the ones affected by the system glitch. So maybe your sons form just didnt have any of the specific issues they fixed?

Update: Just got off the phone with the financial aid office at my son's top choice school. They said they're seeing many applications from early January that are proceeding normally without corrections! The advisor suggested we just keep monitoring the portal and emails, but that there's no need to worry if we haven't received correction notices. She also mentioned that even with the delays, they expect to have all financial aid packages ready by early April, which is plenty of time before the May 1 decision deadline. Feeling much better now!

this is y i HATE the new fafsa!!!! took me 6 tries to get it to accept my tax info and now its sending wierd emails?? what was wrong with the old system???

UPDATE: Finally got through to FSA this morning! Turns out there was a mismatch between the income I reported and what they pulled from my tax return, but for some reason it wasn't triggering the correction page on the website. The agent was able to fix it while I was on the phone. For anyone else dealing with this: definitely call and specifically ask about "hidden validation flags" like someone suggested above. Also, the Claimyr service actually worked great - I got connected to an agent in about 20 minutes instead of waiting on hold for hours.