I can’t speak for the school but I think they will all feel tremendous pressure to extend deadlines if the want people to attend. Many, many families are in your situation.
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I just pulled our EFC from previous two years and S24’s SAI is 17K lower and S22’s is 11k lower - with higher income.
i’m just so confused right now. my form just got processed (submitted 1/2) but there’s a problem. everyone keeps saying their sai got decreased; however, my dad has no income rn and our sai just increased by $20k. it’s a crazy increase that we can’t afford…is there any chance i can get the government to change this number or is it set? i just don’t know if i can reach a real person and get this fixed given the crazy amount of problems with the form this yr and the gov’s inefficiency.
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Did your SAI increase $20K from last year? The 2024-25 FAFSA used income from 2022…could that be the issue?
If your financial situation has changed since then, you will have to fill out each of your school’s professional judgment form for them to take these new circumstances into account.
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went up $20k from the estimated sai value they gave me in january when i submitted. i totally forgot they used ‘22 info, ugh. Thank you for the info, I’ll reach out to the FA offices asap to let them know.
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Finally processed (as of 3/18), after submitting on 1/7.
Our SAI is a hair less than our EFC was the last time I completed FAFSA (fall 2019), although our income has increased a moderate amount.
I finally had my daughter check on our status. Our SAI did go down (from January) about $5000 so that good news. Not sure if it will help but you never know.
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Ours went down with higher income as well.
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My older son, his SAI went up 5K from January to final processing. Younger son it went up $400.
According to this morning’s Electronic Announcement to financial aid professionals, there is an issue that may result in a higher SAI than you currently see for some students.
** Incorrect Dependent Student Contribution from Assets
The FAFSA Processing System (FPS) was not including all data fields needed to correctly calculate the Student Aid Index (SAI) for dependent students who reported assets. The FPS used the student’s Adjusted Net Worth of Businesses and Investment Farms to calculate the Student Contribution from Assets (ISIR field 328) and should have also included the student’s Current Net Worth of Investments and Total of Cash, Savings, and Checking Accounts. This resulted in an SAI that was lower than expected and an inaccurate total Student Contribution from Assets value.
This issue resulted in inaccurate ISIRs for dependent students with assets delivered to FTI-SAIG mailboxes (my note: this means for FAFSA information delivered to schools) prior to March 21, 2024.**
The processor will recalculate the SAI and send to schools. If you’re affected, you’ll see an updated SAI email soon.
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Sheesh.
They have been doing trial runs of the FPS for seems like at least a year…and only realized this programming error now?! I know the new FAFSA was a big difficult project but I do hope there are leadership changes made when the dust settles.
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I believe the formula was adjusted to protect a higher percentage of income from the SAI calculation, so that results in a lower number for some. That percentage had been creeping down for years.
The other new benefit for employed persons is nontaxable income for 401K’s and FSA/HSA is not plugged back in as in previous years. Self-employed persons still have to include their retirement contributions.
So even if the student had a $1,500 savings account from birthday checks over the years, that student will see an amended SAI.
Very few students would list a business or investment farm as a student-owned asset, but most kids have some smallish checking/savings in their own name, which was omitted.
Is this the gist?
Yep. D24’s SAI went up 20k from January! 
Editing to add: it appeared to skip her father’s assets in the first round since he also had a business that was included as an asset, then was update for his savings (she’s dependent).
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Unfortunately, this issue worries me a bit when it comes to students deleting and adding schools. It will be important for the reprocessing due to the asset situation to be completed before deleting any schools. Changes will be applied by the processor to the most recent FAFSA transaction. Affected students need to be sure that any necessary updates are applied by the processor before removing any schools (unless you’re removing schools you are certain you won’t be attending). If you have student assets, just make sure reprocessing is complete before deleting schools you still care about. I would like to think that this will happen before the FAFSA is released for students to update … but I am not going to assume anything.
Also, the Department of Education is encouraging schools to send out award estimates for any FAFSAs they already have. In that case, just be aware that awards may change.
Right, but to do that, schools would have to manually re-calculate SAIs for dependent students with assets (at least if they want/need an accurate SAI). I don’t see that happening in a big way. See the letter to colleges posted here by Jon Boeckenstedt: https://twitter.com/JonBoeckenstedt/status/1771175237498847618
Also, today’s Chronicle daily briefing states that colleges are seeing a high rate of ISIRs being rejected, up to 25% at some schools:
And this reminder (I know we know this, but I don’t understand how many FAFSA only schools are going to be able to stick to a May 1 enrollment deadline)
https://www.chronicle.com/newsletter/daily-briefing/2024-03-22?sra=true
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ED is encouraging schools to recalculate on their own while waiting for ED to reprocess. HUH??? Just wow.
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Right?!
In a process that has seen a fair share of head scratching moments, the hits keep on coming. And it’s March 22 now.
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Again, not to pessimistic… but sometimes things don’t get done. What if it doesn’t get done?