FAFSA is in! I started it on the parent side, then invited S24 to complete his part. Sat with him while he did it. After he completed everything, there was nothing to click on to submit. So I logged in myself, again, even though I had gotten an email saying my part was done… And had to reconfirm all my info (at least it was already in there from before). Once I did that I was able to review and submit!
I guess if you start it from the parent side, they want you to confirm it all after the student is done. They don’t actually tell you to do that, so anyone starting it on the parent side should make sure to check that it actually gets submitted!
Definitely still a handful of weird behaviors and a few bugs, but all in all it wasn’t too bad, at least for a pretty simple scenario.
Known issues are being posted to the Federal Student Aid site used by financial aid professionals. Here is one that may be affecting some of you based on earlier posts:
Description: If a student or parent signs the student’s or parent’s respective section of a 2024-25 FAFSA form that includes other contributors and returns to the form before the other contributors have signed and submitted the form and selects “Save” from the FAFSA menu without making any changes, the signature of that student or parent is removed from the application.
Workaround: The student or parent should re-sign the FAFSA form upon returning to the application, even if the student or parent is not making any changes to the form.
Here is another issue that perhaps explains what some parents are experiencing with addresses (issues are being worked on by FSA and will eventually be fixed - workarounds allow the user to be able to proceed now):
Description: If a user invites a parent or spouse who does not already have an FSA ID account to contribute to a 2024-25 FAFSA form and that contributor attempts to create an account before the contributor’s Social Security Administration (SSA) Match changes from Pending to Full Match, the contributor receives no error message explaining this situation and is prevented from proceeding past Step 3 of the Create an Account page on StudentAid.gov.
Workaround: The parent or spouse contributor can delete the Mailing Address entered on the Create an Account page and then proceed. The contributor’s address can be added to the account via Settings after the account has been created. Alternatively, the contributor can wait until the SSA Match status is Full Match and try again to create an account.
We submitted on January 2nd at 12 pm PST. Both student and parent sections. We were checking every few hours since December 31st and that day it just worked out. It took about 10 - 15 minutes for both sections. There are very few questions and the income info will be transmitted directly from the IRS from what I understand.
It actually was transferred while you were working on the form. That’s how it chose your personalized income questions. I worked on my own FAFSA so that I could see what it was like, and I had several more questions than most of you have gotten or will get. That was because I have an unusual situation (retired) - but it surprised me that my tax information had quickly influenced the questions to be asked, without me even realizing that the information transferred. The old IRS Data Retrieval Process was very obvious.
It didn’t need to ask - it already knew! The individual financial situation based on AGI and tax return dictates which additional income questions, if any, are needed. This is the simplification they were aiming for - the system glitches that are part of the changes will eventually settle & people will see a much simpler experience than we had in past years.
I honestly can’t answer that, because it is possible that the SAI might change if it turns out that something was wrong with the formulas during processing. I believe that the initial information students get has an estimated SAI, and it could (but might not) change when processing is complete. Sorry to be vague, but I do think it’s unknown right now.
I had this issue today as a parent creating account first time after D24 invite sent , after adding address fields did not allow to proceed from step 3 to 4
I was trying multiple times
Just saw the thread here, will try by keeping fields empty as you suggested
Thank you
It is possible that your FAFSA never actually submitted. You and/or your parent may need to sign. One of the issues I posted above refers to an issue where the signature gets erased. If that happened on your FAFSA, you’ll need to sign again. Try that.
