FAFSA parent contributor invitation emails not arriving - time-sensitive help needed
I'm freaking out a little because my son completed his part of the 2025-2026 FAFSA last weekend and sent contributor invitations to both me and his father (we're divorced), but neither of us have received ANY emails. It's been 4 days now! He triple-checked our email addresses in the system and they're correct. His application is just sitting there stuck at 'waiting for contributors' status. Has anyone else had this problem with the contributor invitations never arriving? Our state priority deadline is in 3 weeks and I'm getting really worried. Is there a way to resend the invitations or some other workaround?
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Avery Davis
This happened to our family too! The system is super glitchy this year. Here's what worked for us - have your son log back in and go to the 'Manage Contributors' section. There should be an option to resend invitations. Also, make sure to check your spam/junk folders thoroughly - my invitation was buried in there despite having studentaid.gov on my safe sender list.
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Ev Luca
•Thank you! He just checked and there is a resend option. He tried that and we're still waiting. I've checked every folder in my email including spam, promotions, etc. Nothing from studentaid.gov at all. So frustrating!
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Collins Angel
check ur promotions tab if ur using gmail. that where mine was hiding for like 2 weeks lol
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Ev Luca
•Already checked there and every other folder I can think of. Nothing from studentaid.gov at all.
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Marcelle Drum
This is actually a documented issue with the new FAFSA system. Some contributor emails aren't being sent correctly or are being blocked by certain email providers. Here are three things to try: 1. Have your son create a new contributor profile for each of you with slightly different email addresses (add a period somewhere in Gmail addresses or use a completely different email provider) 2. Make sure neither you nor your ex-husband already have FSA IDs that might be causing a conflict with the contributor invitation 3. Sometimes the system works better if the student removes all contributors first, saves changes, then adds them back and sends new invitations If none of these work, you'll need to contact FSA directly. The contributor section has been one of the most problematic areas with the new system.
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Ev Luca
•Thank you for these detailed suggestions! He's going to try the remove/re-add option tonight. We all have FSA IDs already, so maybe that's causing the conflict? Although I thought the new system was supposed to make it easier for parents with existing FSA IDs...
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Tate Jensen
The exact same thing happened with my daughter's FAFSA! Neither I nor my husband got any emails despite her sending multiple invites. We wasted 2 weeks waiting before figuring out what to do. The solution that FINALLY worked was having her call the Federal Student Aid center directly and they manually reset something on her application. Then the invites came through within an hour.
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Adaline Wong
•Calling the Federal Student Aid center directly is definitely the right move here, but good luck getting through to them! Last time I tried, I was on hold for over 2 hours before getting disconnected. I recently discovered a service called Claimyr (claimyr.com) that holds your place in line and calls you back when an agent is available. Saved me hours of frustration! They have a video demo at https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ that shows how it works. Way better than listening to that hold music for hours only to get disconnected.
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Ev Luca
•Thank you both! I'll check out Claimyr if we need to call - that sounds much better than being on hold forever. My son is going to try removing and re-adding us as contributors first, and if that doesn't work, we'll definitely call FSA directly.
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Gabriel Ruiz
UGH the new FAFSA system is THE WORST!!! Nobody at the Dept of Education seems to have any idea what they're doing. My daughter had the EXACT same issue and do you know what the problem was? Our emails were entered correctly but the system randomly CAPITALIZED some of the letters when sending the invites, which made them invalid! So ridiculous. Have your son check if the system is changing the capitalization of your email addresses.
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Ev Luca
•Wow, that's wild! I wouldn't have thought to check for capitalization issues. I'll have him look at that too. Thanks for the tip!
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Misterclamation Skyblue
Not sure if this helps but my son's college financial aid office told us that some email servers are blocking the FAFSA emails because they think they're phishing attempts. They suggested we add studentaid.gov and noreply.fafsa.gov to our email's safe sender list BEFORE resending the invitations. Worked for us after that!
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Ev Luca
•That's really helpful - I just added both to my safe sender list. His father is doing the same. We'll try the resend after that. Thanks!
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Avery Davis
Any update? Did you get the invitation emails yet?
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Ev Luca
•SUCCESS!!! We did get the invitations finally. What worked was a combination of things: my son removed us completely, we both added studentaid.gov to our safe sender lists, and then he re-added us with slightly different capitalization in our email addresses. Not sure which of those things fixed it, but we got the emails within minutes after that. Now working on completing our sections. Thanks everyone for the help!
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