FAFSA says 'processed successfully' but SAI can't be calculated - no errors listed

I had this exact issue last month. It's usually one of three things: 1) There's a mismatch between your tax filing status and marital status, 2) There's conflicting parent contribution information, or 3) There's a citizenship verification problem. In my case, my parents' marital status didn't match their tax filing status. Call the Federal Student Aid helpline at 1-800-433-3243 and ask them to review your specific application. They can see exactly what's causing the error even if it's not showing up on your end.

same thing happend to me! turns out my dad put his income in the wrong box on the form. But it didnt show up as an actual error just that weird message about not being able to calculate SAI. try checking all the income sections reeeeally carefully, especially if any of your parents are self-employed or have multiple jobs

This is a known issue with the 2025-2026 FAFSA. The system sometimes marks applications as "processed" when they've only completed the preliminary processing phase but haven't fully validated all information. Here are the steps you should take: 1. Download and save a PDF copy of the current FAFSA submission (for your records) 2. Check if any household members are missing their FSA ID verification 3. Verify that your asset information is complete (this is often missed) 4. Check the IRS Data Retrieval Tool connection - sometimes it shows as connected but didn't properly transfer data 5. Look specifically at the household size vs. number in college sections - these must be consistent If none of those reveal the issue, you'll need to speak directly with an FSA representative who can access the detailed processing codes that aren't visible to applicants.

I HAD THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM and spent WEEKS trying to fix it before finding out what was wrong. The FSA website is complete garbage. In my case, it was because my mom has a hyphenated last name and apparently the system couldn't handle that properly even though it accepted it when we entered it. The system is full of these stupid bugs that they don't tell you about. And good luck getting through to anyone on the phone - I literally called 47 times over 3 days and never got a human.

try checking if all contributors completed their sections. my boyfriend had this problem and it was because his dad started the contributor section but never finished it 🤦‍♀️

I used to work in a financial aid office, and this is one of the most common issues we saw with the new FAFSA. The system often displays the "processed successfully" status prematurely, before all validation checks are complete. One thing nobody's mentioned yet - check if there's a discrepancy between reported household size and tax dependents. If you claimed 4 people in your household but only 3 tax dependents (or vice versa), the system flags this but often doesn't display the error properly. Also, I'd highly recommend trying Claimyr (claimyr.com) to get through to FSA. It helped many of our students get connected to an actual FSA agent without the hours of hold time. There's a video demo at https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ that shows how it works. They'll call the FSA line for you and then connect you once they reach a human agent. Saved many of our students from missing deadlines when they had these weird system issues.

Did anyone check your email? Sometimes the FAFSA system sends error notifications to the email on file but doesn't show them on the website. My daughter had a similar issue and we found the actual error explanation buried in an email with the subject line "Action Required: Federal Student Aid Information" that went to her spam folder.

Just a quick update on my earlier comment - the most common reason for the "SAI cannot be calculated" error with no visible explanation is often a discrepancy in the parent/student marital status dates. Double-check that all the dates you entered for any marriage, divorce, or separation are consistent with your tax filing status for the year. The system is extremely picky about this and will reject the calculation without explaining why.

Just another theory - did you check if your state of residency matches on all forms? My son's got held up because I put Arizona (where we lived when he was born) instead of Arkansas (where we live now) on one section. These little things can cause the whole application to stall with no clear error message.

UPDATE: First, thank you all SO MUCH for the helpful suggestions! I finally got through to FSA after using that Claimyr service someone recommended (it actually worked!). The agent confirmed it was exactly what @profile2 suggested - the marriage date in December 2023 was causing a flag since we filed jointly that year. They helped me submit a correction with a special note explaining the situation, and the agent said they'd expedite the review since my daughter's aid deadline is coming up. The status now shows "Correction Processing" so fingers crossed it will be fixed in a few days. Will update when we know for sure!

Wow, this thread is incredibly helpful! I'm a high school counselor and I've had several families dealing with this exact same issue this year. The 2025-2026 FAFSA rollout has been especially buggy with these hidden validation errors. I'm definitely going to share the Claimyr service with my families - the FSA phone lines have been completely overwhelmed this season. It's so frustrating that the system shows "processed successfully" when there are actually blocking issues. Thank you everyone for sharing your solutions - I'm going to create a checklist for my families based on all the common causes mentioned here (marriage date discrepancies, household size vs tax dependents, hyphenated names, incomplete contributor sections, etc.).