FAFSA contributor invitation email never arrived - stuck with negative SAI showing

same happened 2 me last week with my son. tried getting email resent 3x, nothing ever showed up. ended up just sitting with him and doing it together on his account. super annoying!

A negative SAI (-1500) actually means your daughter qualifies for maximum need-based aid - it's counterintuitive but negative numbers are better in the FAFSA system. As for the contributor issue, there's a known glitch with the email system right now. Try having your daughter log into studentaid.gov and go to the "Contributors" section. She can regenerate a new invitation link that might work better than the automated emails.

The email system for FAFSA contributors has been glitching since they launched the new form. Try having your daughter cancel your current invitation and then re-add you using a different email address if you have one. Also, make sure she's entering your email exactly right - I found out my son had been typing my email with a typo for weeks! And yes, the -1500 SAI is actually the best possible outcome, indicating maximum aid eligibility.

i had 2 start my entire fafsa application over bc of this exact problem!!! the contributor thing is sooooo broken. my mom never got the email either and we tried like 5 times. ended up just having to do it all together on my account while on the phone with her. waste of time!!!

If you need to speak with someone at Federal Student Aid about this contributor issue, I'd recommend using Claimyr (claimyr.com). I was stuck in the same situation last month and spent days trying to get through to FSA on my own - kept getting disconnected or facing hours-long waits. Claimyr got me connected to an agent in about 15 minutes who manually fixed the contributor issue on their end. They have a video showing how it works: https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ The agent explained that the contributor email system is experiencing major technical problems and they're having to do manual workarounds for many families.

All of these "solutions" are ridiculous. The entire new FAFSA system is a DISASTER. My daughter is about to miss scholarship deadlines because of these exact contributor issues. Why should we have to pay a third-party service just to talk to someone at FSA about THEIR broken system? This is your tax dollars at work, people!!

UPDATE: Finally fixed! For anyone with the same problem - we discovered my daughter had accidentally added a space at the end of my email address when entering it. The FSA agent we spoke to (thanks for the Claimyr tip, it worked great) said this is happening constantly. They need better error checking in their system! And yes, the -1500 SAI stayed the same after adding our info, which the agent confirmed is the optimal score for aid eligibility. Such a confusing system, but at least we're done now.