FAFSA parent application missing from My Activity portal - help locating it

same thing happened to me!! the stupid website is so glitchy this year, i lost my sons application twice already. so frustrating

Are you absolutely sure you were logged into your FSA ID and not your daughter's? This is a common mistake. Parents often accidentally log in with their child's credentials when starting the parent contribution section. If you started the application while logged in as your daughter, it would only show up in HER My Activity section, not yours.

check your spam folder! sometimes those confirmation emails end up there and you need to click the link to activate the application before it shows up in your activity

The SAME EXACT thing happened to me last month and I was FURIOUS!!! Turns out there's a stupid 30-minute timeout on the FAFSA website and if you don't save or submit within that time, IT JUST DELETES YOUR WORK WITHOUT WARNING!!! This is the third year I've done FAFSA and they keep making it WORSE every year! The new SAI system is a complete DISASTER compared to the old EFC calculation.

This is a common issue with the parent portion of FAFSA applications. Here are the most likely scenarios and solutions: 1. **Wrong Account**: As mentioned, you might have been logged into your daughter's FSA ID instead of yours. Have her check her My Activity. 2. **Application Not Properly Started**: If you didn't click the specific "Start" button after entering initial information, the system might not have registered it as an active application. 3. **Timeout Without Save**: The FAFSA portal automatically times out after 30 minutes of inactivity, and if you didn't manually save before that happened, your progress might not have been recorded. 4. **Browser Cache Issues**: Try clearing your browser cache and cookies, then log in again. 5. **Filter Settings**: Check if you have any filters applied in the My Activity section that might be hiding your application. If none of these work, you'll likely need to call Federal Student Aid directly. Their contact center can search for your application using your personal information and either recover it or confirm it needs to be restarted.

I had this exact problem last month and spent DAYS trying to fix it. I finally got through to a FAFSA agent who helped me locate my application. They can see things on their end that don't show up in our portal sometimes. I used this service called Claimyr to get through to an agent without waiting on hold forever: claimyr.com. They have a quick video showing how it works: https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ It basically holds your place in line and calls you when an agent is ready. The agent was able to find my "ghost" application and help me recover access to it. Saved me from having to redo everything.

Check the date range filter in the My Activity section. The default only shows applications from the past 30 days, so if you started it earlier, you might need to expand the date range. Also, make sure you're looking at "All application types" rather than just a specific year's FAFSA.

UPDATE: Mystery solved! After checking all your suggestions, my daughter logged into her FSA ID account and found the application in HER activity section. Apparently I was logged into her account when I started working on the parent contribution (facepalm). The confusing part is that I remember entering my FSA ID too, but I guess that was just to authorize my section of HER application, not to create it in MY account. She sent me a new contributor invitation email, and now I can access it directly without going through her account. Thank you all for your help!!

So glad you figured it out! This exact thing happened to my friend last year and she ended up redoing the entire parent section because she couldn't find it. The FAFSA interface really needs better user flow - it's not intuitive at all that parent contributions live under the student's account. Your post will definitely help other parents who run into this same issue!

This is such a valuable thread! I'm going through the FAFSA process for the first time with my daughter and had no idea how the parent contributor system worked. I was about to make the same mistake of trying to start my own application instead of waiting for her invitation. The FAFSA really should make this clearer in their instructions - it's so confusing that parent information is part of the student's application rather than a separate parent application. Thanks everyone for explaining the process!