FAFSA beta application from November not showing up at colleges - Should I remove/re-add schools?

This is happening to a ton of beta FAFSA filers. My daughter had the same issue with 3 of her schools. The remove/re-add schools trick DID work for us, but it takes about 3-4 days for the schools to receive the information after you do this. It doesn't reset your original submission date though, so don't worry about that part. I'd recommend calling the Federal Student Aid Information Center to confirm this is the right approach for your situation before doing anything.

dont do the remove/add thing!!! my cousin tried that and it completely reset his whole application and he had to start over from scratch. call the schools first.

I work in a financial aid office, and we're seeing this issue frequently with beta FAFSA filers. The problem is that during the beta period, there were some data transmission errors between FSA and college systems. Here's what I recommend: 1. First, verify in your son's studentaid.gov account that the schools are actually listed in his FAFSA (check the "My FAFSA" section). 2. If they are listed, call each school's financial aid office directly and ask them to manually "pull" his FAFSA using his name and DOB. Many schools can do this and it's often quicker than waiting for the remove/re-add method. 3. The remove/re-add method DOES work in most cases, but I'd only use it as a last resort, and ONLY do it for the schools not receiving the data (not all schools). 4. Document everything - take screenshots of his processed application showing the schools listed and the submission date. And yes, removing/re-adding schools shouldn't affect his original submission date for aid consideration, but having documentation helps if there's any dispute.

we had this exact problem!!! the beta FAFSA was such a disaster. we ended up hving to resubmit the ENTIRE application for my daughter. so frustrating after spending hours on the beta version. the school told us the beta data got corrupted somehow?? idk but just be prepared to potentially redo everything.

After trying for 3 days to get anyone at Federal Student Aid to help with a similar issue, I finally found a service called Claimyr that got me through to an actual FSA agent in about 10 minutes. The agent was able to see that there was a data transmission flag on my daughter's application and fixed it right there while I was on the phone. Seriously worth checking out at claimyr.com - they have a video showing how it works: https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ The FSA agent told me the remove/add method sometimes works but can also create new problems if there are other flags on the account. Better to get someone to look directly at the specific transmission issue.

You can try calling FSA directly, but I was on hold for hours over multiple days and kept getting disconnected. Claimyr just helps you skip the hold time. The actual conversation is still directly between you and the FSA agent.

Beta FAFSA filer here! Check if any of the colleges use the CSS Profile too. My daughter had this exact situation, and it turned out that two schools were waiting for her CSS Profile (which is completely separate from FAFSA) and one school needed her to create an account on their financial aid portal first before they could access her FAFSA. The last school had actually received her FAFSA but hadn't processed it yet so it still showed as "missing" in their system. Only one school actually had a true FAFSA transmission issue.

One more important thing: if you do end up needing to use the remove/re-add method, do it in small batches (2 schools at a time) rather than all at once. This reduces the chance of transmission errors. And only do this during business hours (Monday-Friday, 8am-8pm Eastern) when the FSA technical support team is available in case something goes wrong.

I'd wait at least 48 hours between batches and verify with the schools that they received the data before proceeding with the next batch. Also, keep detailed notes of which schools you've removed/re-added and when. This will be helpful if you need to escalate to FSA.