FAFSA showing blank household size on student's side causing high SAI - should I manually correct it?

The same EXACT thing happened to us!! Our SAI came back at $32,500 which is INSANE for our income level. When I checked my son's application, the household number was blank. I called the FAFSA helpline and after 2 HOURS on hold they hung up on me. Then I submitted a correction from his account to change household to 3 and our SAI dropped to $18,700!!! That's still higher than I expected but much better. The system is completely broken this year.

Oh wow, that's a HUGE difference! Did you have any issues after submitting the correction? I'm worried about creating inconsistencies between my account and hers, but a potential SAI reduction like that would be significant for us.

This new FAFSA is screwing everyone up. Def fix the student's profile directly by adding the household number. The parent and student sides dont sync up properly this year, its a mess. I'd also double check that income is reporting correctly. Mine showed wrong amounts and we had to manually fix those too.

yeahh i had like 4 errors on mine... crazy how they cant make a working form after delaying for months. so annoying

For real! My daughter's college financial aid office told me they're seeing errors in like 70% of applications. Complete disaster.

This is actually a known issue with the 2024-2025 FAFSA. The Department of Education confirmed there's a glitch where student household size doesn't properly import from the parent's application. You should definitely make that manual correction on your daughter's side - it won't create inconsistencies because they're aware of this specific issue.\n\nThe household size directly impacts the SAI calculation as it affects both the Income Protection Allowance and the Asset Protection Allowance in the formula. Each additional person in the household can reduce your SAI significantly. Just make sure when you make the correction that you also verify all other information (income, assets, etc.) is correct at the same time.

Thank you for explaining this so clearly! I'll go ahead and make that correction today. Is there anything else I should specifically look for while I'm reviewing the rest of the application?

Yes, definitely check that the following are correct:\n1. Your AGI from your tax return\n2. All untaxed income entries\n3. Cash, savings, and checking account balances\n4. College enrollment status for each family member\n\nAlso make sure your daughter is correctly listed as a dependent student. I've seen cases where that mysteriously changes and causes huge SAI increases.

I had this same issue and spent days trying to get through to someone at Federal Student Aid. I tried the general helpline, the FSA ID helpline, and even my daughter's college financial aid office. Finally, I used Claimyr (claimyr.com) to get through to an agent after my 5th attempt at calling got disconnected. They have a video showing how it works: https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ\n\nThe agent confirmed this is affecting thousands of applications and said to manually correct the student's household size. After we fixed it, our SAI dropped by over $9,000. They also had me verify income fields and dependent status while I was making corrections.

Thank you for sharing! I'll check out that service if I can't get through on my own. $9,000 reduction is significant - was the process of making corrections pretty straightforward once you knew what to fix?

Yes, making the actual corrections was easy! Just log into your daughter's account, select

u should DEF change that blank to 4!!! theres no way the SAI is calculated right with a blank household size. my cousin works in financial aid and she said household size is like one of the BIGGEST factors in the calculation. she said they're seeing tons of apps with this exact issue

Do you know approximately how much the SAI might change with a household size correction? We're trying to figure out if it's worth going through the whole reprocessing delay for our son's application.

my cousins office is seeing like $3k-$15k differences depending on income and assets and stuff. bigger families see bigger changes obviously. but even going from blank to 2 people made a huge diff for some people

We had this same problem! Our SAI was ridiculously high. I checked my twins' FAFSA applications and both had blank household sizes. We have 5 in our household, and when I corrected this field on both applications, our SAI was recalculated and dropped by almost $12,000! It took about 3-4 days for the new SAI to appear after corrections.\n\nMake sure to check other fields too while you're making corrections. Our applications also had some strange asset reporting issues where some retirement accounts were incorrectly included when they shouldn't have been.

That's a massive difference! Did you have to provide any documentation for the correction, or just submit the change through the portal? And did both colleges accept the corrected SAI without questions?

just fix it. my fafsa had like 5 errors and the aid ppl at my school said everyones does this year lol

Has anyone else noticed that submitting corrections is taking FOREVER to process? I submitted mine 10 days ago and it still shows as

Yes!! Mine took 12 days to reprocess after corrections. You should contact your daughter's financial aid office and let them know you've submitted corrections but they're still processing. Most schools are being flexible with deadlines this year because of all the FAFSA problems.

My daughter's took 6 days to reprocess recently. Her friend's took almost 3 weeks! It's completely random from what I can tell. Federal Student Aid is completely overwhelmed right now.

I think the FAFSA automatically assumes a student household size of 1 (just the student) for calculation purposes if that field is blank. Obviously that would result in a much higher SAI than if you have a household of 4! Definitely make that correction from your daughter's account. \n\nI saw a presentation from a financial aid administrator who said this is one of the most common errors they're seeing this year, along with the parent contribution not being split correctly between multiple students.

That makes sense why our SAI seems so off! If they're calculating as if she's in a household of 1 instead of 4, that would explain a lot. I'll make that correction right away. Thanks for the explanation.