FAFSA initial SAI of 73K seems wrong - can it be reduced after review?

That SAI does sound unusually high for your income level. There are several reasons your SAI might have been calculated incorrectly: 1. Did you accidentally include retirement assets as investments? FAFSA doesn't count retirement accounts but if you reported them as regular investments, it would inflate your SAI dramatically. 2. Check if you entered any one-time income (like a home sale or inheritance) that doesn't reflect your normal financial situation. 3. Verify parent vs. student assets were correctly identified - parent assets are assessed at a much lower rate. Yes, your SAI can absolutely change after review. You should immediately request a professional judgment review (sometimes called a special circumstances review) through your daughter's preferred college financial aid office. They can manually adjust your SAI based on documentation you provide.

mine was wrong 2 when it frist came out. turned out i accidently put an extra zero on our house value lol. went from sai of 80k to 23k after correction. check all ur numbers!!

Professional financial aid advisor here. Your SAI of 73342 does seem inconsistent with a household income of $125K with two children unless there are substantial non-retirement assets or other factors involved. First, you absolutely can and should submit corrections to your FAFSA. Locate the section where you may have misreported assets and submit formal corrections online. Second, if you've already carefully reviewed and there aren't obvious errors, you should prepare for a Professional Judgment (PJ) request. This requires: 1. A formal letter explaining your circumstances 2. Documentation of your financial situation 3. Submit directly to each college's financial aid office (not FAFSA) Important: Each college handles PJ requests differently, and they have authority to adjust your SAI downward based on their institutional policies. Focus on your daughter's top choice schools first.

the whole SAI system is RIGGED to make middle class families look rich!!! we had the same thing happen, they counted the equity in our HOME as if we could just sell it to pay for college!!! like where are we supposed to LIVE??? the entire system is designed to DENY aid to hardworking families and give it all to the super poor or super rich who know how to game the system. total scam.

I had a similar issue last year with my son's FAFSA showing an impossibly high SAI. After getting disconnected seven times trying to reach someone at Federal Student Aid, I found Claimyr (claimyr.com) which got me connected to an actual agent in under 15 minutes. They helped identify that I had incorrectly reported our home sale proceeds as income rather than as an asset conversion. You can see how their service works here: https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ After correcting this one error, our SAI dropped by over $30K, which made my son eligible for several scholarships with SAI caps. Definitely worth looking into if you're struggling to get answers from FSA directly.

I work in a college financial aid office, and I see this situation frequently. Here's what you need to know about SAI changes: 1. Initial FAFSA SAIs often change after corrections and review. This isn't your final number. 2. For a family of 4 with $125K income, your SAI should typically be in the 20-40K range unless you have substantial assets or unusual income situations. 3. Common errors that inflate SAI include: - Reporting retirement accounts as investments - Including the value of your primary residence (not counted) - Reporting business value incorrectly - Double-counting income or assets 4. Even after corrections, if your SAI is still high, work directly with your daughter's preferred schools. Financial aid officers have significant discretion through Professional Judgment to adjust SAI for situations not captured by the formula.

Something similar happened to my daughter last year. Our SAI came back at 68K even though we make about the same as you. Turns out I had entered the full value of our small business (about $350K) when I should have only reported the percentage we actually own (51%). That one mistake inflated our SAI by almost 30K! After correction, we qualified for way more aid. Don't panic yet - check all your numbers and submit corrections asap.

UPDATE: You were all right! After reviewing our submission, I found TWO major errors: 1. We accidentally included our retirement accounts ($450K) as investment assets 2. We reported the cash-out from refinancing our home ($60K) as additional income I've submitted corrections online and also reached out to my daughter's top schools to explain the situation. The financial aid officer at her first-choice school was incredibly helpful and said this happens all the time. She estimated our corrected SAI should be around 32K-35K, which is still high but MUCH more manageable. Thank you all for preventing my complete nervous breakdown! Will update when we get the revised SAI.

Just wait til you see how little aid you get even WITH the corrected SAI 🙄 My daughter got into her dream school, our SAI was 29K, and they still expected us to pay 45K per year after their "generous" aid package. The whole system is broken.

As a newcomer to this community, I'm so grateful to find this thread! I'm currently going through the exact same situation with my son's FAFSA showing an SAI that seems impossibly high for our income level. Reading through everyone's experiences and advice here has been incredibly reassuring - especially seeing @Morita Montoya's update about finding those major errors and getting things corrected. I'm now motivated to go back through our FAFSA line by line to look for similar mistakes. The retirement account confusion seems to be a really common issue based on what I'm reading here. It's also helpful to know that financial aid officers at colleges are used to dealing with these situations and can be supportive. Thank you all for sharing your knowledge and experiences - it's making what felt like an impossible situation seem much more manageable!