Just completed ctudent and parent portions of 2025-26 FAFSA and submitted it. So confusing! First of all the system never prompted me as to when it was transferring data from the IRS and never asked me for any financial questions except if there are any family members receiving TANF, Medical Assistance, SNAP. My son receives SNAP. I checked that off. No other financial questions from parent, and the dependent student has no income just 150 in savings. I received an email confirming receipt of FAFSA with an ESTIMATED SAI of 7900 and was also noted that the maximum amount of Pell would be $720. This makes no sense at all. The past year was no different than prior with finances except the AGI was lower for us. Can’t think of a reason Estimated SAI would be a fraction of what is was for prior 2 years. Can’t review any submitted info since it is still processing
You can use this to manually calculate your SAI and verify it is correct. It takes forever; I had to do it last year since my FAFSA form was not being reported correctly. But it helps ensure accuracy and might allow you to pinpoint a reason for the increase based on this year’s formula. https://fsapartners.ed.gov/sites/default/files/2024-01/20242025FAFSAPellEligibilityandSAIGuide.pdf
Thanks you for that, I will go through it. Also, Any reason it says “Estimated SAI” in the confirmation email as opposed to just “SAI”? Or is there no difference.
I think it does not become official until it is officially processed. But mine has never been different than what the email said in the two times I have done it.
Thanks again…
Usually that means the parent will not have to report assets.
Are you saying your SAI is higher and your Pell grant lower than in previous years? Last year, when you had a lower AGI, that would likely result in a greater Pell grant as compared to this year with a higher AGI.
Here are more resources:
The full FAFSA PDF: https://studentaid.gov/sites/default/files/2025-26-fafsa.pdf
Full 2025-26 Handbook: Filling Out the FAFSA Form | 2025-2026 Federal Student Aid Handbook
And here’s the actual formula for 2025-26 (I think the link above is for 2024-25, not sure if there are differences): https://fsapartners.ed.gov/sites/default/files/2024-08/20252026StudentAidIndexSAIandPellGrantEligibilityGuide.pdf
Yes, that is correct, this year the Estimated SAI is significantly higher and Pell Grant lower than in previous years . Last year, our AGI was higher and our SAI was a fraction of what it is for 2025-26 - Pell was around 7000.
For 2025-26. our AGI is much lower, and no other changes from prior year. This is the reason I am baffled where this Estimated SAI and Pell incoming from. I will do the calculations now…
You are saying your AGI is lower for the 2023 tax year (used for the 2025-26 FAFSA) than it was for the 2022 tax year (used for the 2024-2025 FAFSA)?
The FAFSA was so messed up for the 2024-2025 academic year…it really was. Supposedly all the kinks got worked out…but maybe they didn’t!
Do the manual calculation. See what that does!
Yes, the AGI is lower for the 2023 tax year than for the past two prior years (23-24 and 24-25 academic years), with all other factors remaining the same, except the fact that my son receives SNAP -that is where the confusion arises about such a huge SAI increase for 2025-26. I will do the manual calculation…
Please let us know if you figure this out!
It sounds like something could be off. Did you have an untaxed rollover (401k, IRA) that year? That could be the culprit.
There were no any type of rollovers. Just completed the formula manually, SAI is 2783!
Sounds like you need to contact the FAFSA helpline AND your college…see what needs to be done to correct this.
Yes, Thank you. That will be my next step. It would be very helpful to actually see the data transferred from the IRS and pinpoint the error, once FAFSA for 2025-26 is processed. Too bad it will not visible on the SAR. Maybe the ESTIMATED SAI ( sent over in confirmation email) will change once my FAFSA gets processed, hopefully this week?
I doubt that it will change. I imagine that this might be a glitch that has not yet been discovered, so I would definitely reach out to the school. However, they might not be pulling in next year’s FAFSA yet, so don’t be surprised if they say they can’t see it yet. You should probably reach out to the FAFSA help line, but I don’t know how helpful they will be. Maybe things have changed since last year - I would absolutely tell them that your SAI is higher than last year but given your financial info, should not be - that you did a hand calculation that resulted in a lower SAI - and that you want to figure out where the issue is that’s causing it to be higher than expected.
First, though, wait until you are able to log back into the FAFSA to make updates. Click on the little dots in the upper right hand corner, then choose Review Answers. You should be able to see the AGI and taxes paid that transferred in from the IRS. Do those amounts seem correct based on your information? They should, of course, but it’s good to double check in case something weird is going on. This is assuming you can see the AGI and taxes paid that were transferred. I thought you weren’t supposed to be able to, but I see that information on the FAFSA from last year that I set up for myself to be able to answer questions. I never submitted it, though, so I might have entered tax information in manually … I thought I transferred it, but I can’t remember for sure. So if you don’t see that information, don’t panic - you probably aren’t supposed to. But you can always compare what you are able to see on last year’s answers with what you can see on this year’s answers - you’ll be able to pull up both forms (you may have to have your child log into their FAFSA account to see that stuff, though). It’s all changed since I worked in financial aid!
So FAFSA got processes and the SAI is still the same. I reviewed my answers and compared with last year. The only difference is the Free/Reduced School Lunch is checked off for 2022 as opposed to 2023 where we checked off SNAP. I am not able to see the AGI and taxes paid that transferred in from the IRS, they’re just arrows in those fields. Tried to reach out to the FAFSA help line more than once, told them SAI is higher than last year but based on financial info, should not be. Also said I did a hand calculation that resulted in a lower SAI and if they can assist in locating the error. Well, they are pretty useless, to be real honest. They do not have much of an idea of what I am asking and just quote the answers which are from the instructions and are irrelevant just to give some sort of an answer. I cannot contact the Financial Aid office since they will not upload FAFSAs until sometime in Spring…
You can contact the financial aid office at any time to ask about this discrepancy between last year and this year…per your SAI. If they have not uploaded your FAFSA, they won’t be able to compare, but you might be able to find out what they will do for you about this.
Are you accessing FAFSA by signing in with your student’s FSA ID? (you should be)
As kelsmom said above, after logging in and saying you want to make an update/correction, there should be the 3 little dots in the upper right section. Choose view the fafsa submission summary…that should show the info that imported from the IRS.
If the above doesn’t work, you will have to wait until a school downloads the info and can see all the IRS data so you can do a comparison. You might also try the FAFSA hotline until you get a helpful person. Lastly, many states have a governmental service that helps people with FAFSA, in Illinois we have ISAC. See if your state has something similar. The ISAC peeps are quite good. https://www.isac.org/
Last year there were problems with certain tax return line items importing correctly, like Educational Tax Credits. Haven’t heard of anything similar this year though.
But the result is the same, correct? Meaning you did not have to answer any asset questions?
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