And when I originally got the 24k number, I was figuring I missed a 0 somewhere and wish I had screenshots of my answers. The site for estimating SAI is much closer to the new number. But like I said, my numbers are the same now as in February and no mistakes on my part, yet it’s a huge change in results.
That definitely makes this year a difficult one for families sending a student to college for the first time.
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My guess is that there were additional triggers also erroneously causing parent assets to be ignored.
D24’s original SAI did not seem right at all, but there was nothing I could do about it at the time.
What is showing up now is much higher, and closer to the estimate I had hand calculated.
When messing around with the calculations, if I drop off parent assets, I could get something very close to the original SAI (the one that was not correct, it appears to be corrected for the SAI they sent to schools).
So in D24’s case the higher SAI wasn’t from any changes to the actual formula, it was them fixing errors to make the formula calculate as originally intended.
I would love to be in the room when (if?) this mess is dissected. It would be fascinating to see what went wrong, where it went wrong & why it went wrong. I do hope that FSA does this, because it’s the only way to know how to do things better in the future.
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Yep. I just did the estimator with no assets and it was much closer to the actual. They must not have been considering assets correctly. Frustrating either way.
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It means congratulations are in order. Even though you’re not going to get anything, you seem to be well off enough to afford a $400K/year school!
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Is SAI per year or in total across 4 years? i assumed it was the latter?
SAI is a single year number. You’ll file FAFSA again next year - and the year after - and if your financial position changes, your SAI for that year will change as well.
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That may be the biggest EFC/SAI I have ever heard of. Congratulations on the enormity of your success!
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Starting to think it’s an error
You would likely have to have a 400k plus per year income and/or the equivalent in non-retirement liquid assets to have an SAI that high. I’m not sure how else you would end up with a number that high.
Thx. I’m going to look into it. It’s an error I think…
Well…your income is pulled directly from your taxes. Any chance you entered your assets with an extra zero or two. OR did you put your parent assets under your student? Or did you list your primary home equity as an asset?
Did you do a retirement rollover?
@kelsmom did the retirement rollover issue get solved?
I think we may have made a few of these mistakes and recently did a retirement rollover
Hoping @kelsmom can address how the new FAFSA handles those rollovers.
Our FAFSA is showing as processed (as of Mar 22) and there is an SAI.
However, under Next Steps, 1 Correct any errors on you FASFA Form, it states: We can’t successfully process your FAFSFA form due to the errors listed on this page. Review the list of errors for instructions. There is a bullet point following that directing us to our colleges’ financial aid office if we need additional help.
BUT, there is no list of errors on the page or anywhere we can access on the site.
Wondering if anyone else has a similar message indicating an inability to process due to errors, but no corresponding list of errors to remediate.
If the tax return had a retirement account distribution, there is a follow up question - not a pop up, but an obvious question - asking if there was a rollover. It is much less likely that someone will miss the question than it used to be, but it is certainly possible. When your child is finally able to update their FAFSA - hopefully in a week or so - go into it and see if you answered the rollover question affirmatively. If you say yes, it will ask for the amount of the rollover.
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