Some students unable to correct or update FAFSA

June 30, 20222

For financial aid to be awarded appropriately, students and parents must submit correct information on the FAFSA.

And they must be able to correct that information if it is wrong or needs updating.

However, there has been an issue prevents some students from submitting a correction to their federal financial aid application.

In a June 16 Electronic Announcement, Federal Student Aid (FSA) said it has become aware of an issue that prevents certain users from being able to submit a correction to their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FASFA®) form using fafsa.gov. According to the announcement, this happens when a user is attempting to change the dependency status to independent and the student’s parents used the IRS Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) in a previous transaction.

The Department said users who encounter this issue have two workaround options:

• Contact their Financial Aid Administrator (FAA) and request the FAA submit the necessary correction, or
• Call the Federal Student Aid Information Center at 1-800-4FED-AID (1-800-433-3243) and request a paper Student Aid Report (SAR). Once the SAR is received, they can make the correction on the paper SAR and submit it for processing.

The Department said they are working on a solution for this issue.