FAFSA 25-26: Should student complete form before SSA verification finishes?

Your daughter should wait until the SSA verification is complete before starting the FAFSA. Trying to move forward before verification will likely cause errors in the system. The verification typically takes 1-3 business days, but can occasionally take longer due to system issues or SSA backlogs. If it's been 5 days already, I'd recommend calling the Federal Student Aid Information Center to check on the status. The number is 1-800-433-3243.

I've been through this exact same thing with my son last year! The SSA verification took almost TWO WEEKS for us!! Can you believe that? And we couldnt do ANYTHING until it finished. Super frustrating. But I will say that once the verification went through, the rest of the process was pretty smooth. Just keep checking her FSA account daily to see if its been verified yet. Thats what we did.

It didn't affect his aid package because we still submitted before his school's priority deadline. Just make sure you know what those deadlines are! Some schools are as early as January 15 for priority consideration, while others are February or March. As long as you submit before the priority deadline for her schools, she should be fine for aid consideration.

Financial aid counselor here - there's a specific reason you need to wait for SSA verification to complete before starting the FAFSA. The verification process confirms your daughter's Social Security Number, name, and date of birth match exactly with SSA records. Without this completed verification, you might be able to start the form, but you won't be able to submit it successfully, and any information entered might cause errors requiring you to start over. If it's been more than 5 business days (not counting weekends), there could be a mismatch between the information your daughter entered when creating her FSA ID and what's in the SSA database. Common issues include: 1. Name doesn't exactly match Social Security card (including hyphens, spaces) 2. Different address than what SSA has on file 3. Recently changed legal name not updated with SSA 4. Typo in SSN when creating FSA ID You should definitely call FSA to check on the status and potentially troubleshoot.

My verification took 9 days and i swear i almost lost my mind waiting lol. SSA is super backed up this year it seems. one thing to try - have her log out completely then log back in. sometimes the system updates but doesn't show until you do a fresh login.

I spent literally DAYS trying to get through to someone at Federal Student Aid about this exact issue when my son was applying. The wait times were insane - 2+ hours sometimes, and then we'd get disconnected! I finally tried using Claimyr (claimyr.com) and they got us connected to an FSA rep in about 15 minutes. They have a video showing how it works: https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ. The agent confirmed my son's verification was actually complete but there was a system glitch not showing the update. She reset something on their end and we were able to start the application right away after that. Might be worth trying if you're still stuck after a week.

It worked for us! My husband was super skeptical too. But it connected us to a real FSA agent who fixed our issue. I'm not sure if it works for every government agency, but it definitely worked for Federal Student Aid.

Update: We called FSA this morning (after trying for two days!) and found out there was a small discrepancy between how her name appears on her Social Security card and how she entered it when creating her FSA ID. Apparently even a missing middle initial can cause the verification to hang! The rep helped us correct it, and we were told the verification should complete within 1-2 days now. Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions!