FAFSA FAQ

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.

Description: In the case of a user who is married and has filed jointly (Married Filing Jointly), the user must enter the spouse’s personally identifiable information but does not need to invite the spouse to contribute to the 2024-25 FAFSA form. If the user changes the marital status response to Married Filing Separately after the spouse information has already been entered, the user is not shown the page to invite the spouse even though an invitation is now required to capture the spouse’s financial information.

Workaround: Impacted customers should log in to StudentAid.gov, navigate to My Activity, and select “Edit Contributor Information” and then “Update Information”. Re-entering the spouse’s information will effectively remove and re-add the contributor, allowing an invitation to be sent.

Description: Graduate students who are notified of having a Pell-eligible Estimated Student Aid Index (SAI) after submitting a 2024-25 FAFSA are shown an incorrect message stating they may be eligible for a specific Federal Pell Grant amount. Although a graduate student could have an SAI that is Pell-eligible, the graduate student is ineligible to receive a Federal Pell Grant and should not receive the incorrect message.

Workaround: A graduate student who receives the incorrect message should be advised to disregard the message as graduate students are ineligible to receive Federal Pell Grants.

Description: If the mailing address section on the Student Identity and Information page is blank on a student’s 2024-25 FAFSA form, it means the student does not have an address stored in the FSA ID system.

Workaround: Impacted customers should go to Account Settings, navigate to the Contact Information page, select the terms and conditions checkbox, and click save. These actions associate the student’s address that appears under Settings with the FSA ID. Once the student navigates back to the FAFSA form, the mailing address will populate on the Student Identity and Information page.

Description: In some cases, a parent who has started a 2024-25 FAFSA form on behalf of a student is unable to continue past the Student Information page and receives an error message stating that there is already an application on file for the student. This happens very rarely when the system creates a FAFSA but fails to generate and attach the student’s record to the application. If there is no student record attached to a FAFSA, then a parent will not be able to access the application beyond the Student Information page.

Workaround: A parent who encounters this issue will need the student to access or restart the 2024-25 FAFSA form. If the student logs in to StudentAid.gov and does not see the application under My Activity, the student will need to navigate to the FAFSA landing page, start a new form as a student, and invite the parent to the application. This action will nullify the previous FAFSA form initiated by the parent.

Description: If a 2024-25 FAFSA form has all required information and the only remaining actions are for signature/submission, the status of the FAFSA form in My Activity will display as “In Progress” for any users/contributors that do not have those remaining actions. For example, if a dependent student completes the student section but does not submit and the student’s parent completes the parent section, the FAFSA form status displays as In Progress to the parent because the student still needs to submit. As a result of the In Progress status, the parent may not realize what action is required to finalize the form.

Workaround: Students can enter the application and navigate through the end of the application to finalize and submit the application.

Description: If a parent with no Social Security number (SSN) starts the 2024-25 FAFSA form for a student, the parent will receive an error message on the “Student Information” page. This incorrect error message states that the user is “unauthorized to act on behalf of the student since they already have a 24-25 FAFSA form” even if the student has not started an application. A parent with no SSN also is not able to contribute to the form, even if the student starts the application and invites the parent to contribute.

Workaround: There is currently no workaround for a parent without an SSN. A student may start the application, but the parent will not be able to contribute the parent information. The student and parent will be able to complete the 2024-25 FAFSA form online once the issue is resolved.  Please contact the EMU financial aid office at finaid@emu.edu and we will provide you with a paper FAFSA.

Description: If a married student or parent leaves the 2024-25 FAFSA form before entering the required information for the spouse, the student or parent will not be able to add this information when the student or parent re-enters the form and will be prevented from submitting the form.

Workaround: There is currently no workaround to this issue. The student or parent will be able to complete and submit the 2024-25 FAFSA form online once the issue is resolved.

Description: If a student selects the Eligible Noncitizen status on the 2024-25 FAFSA form and proceeds to enter an A-Number that ends in zero, the student receives an error message stating that the application failed to save. This message displays to the student on each subsequent page, regardless of the data the student enters in the form. As a result of the application not saving, the student is unable to proceed beyond the “Selected Colleges and Career Schools” page to the “Review” page.

Workaround: There is currently no work around to this issue. The student will be able to complete and submit the 2024-25 FAFSA form online once the issue is resolved.

The FAFSA Simplification Act passed by the US Congress in 2020 allows for the first major redesign of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) process in over 40 years. It represents a significant overhaul of federal student aid, including changes to the FAFSA form, need analysis, storage of federal student aid application data, and many policies and procedures for schools that participate in Title IV programs. Students and families will see a different measure of their ability to pay for college and experience a change in the methodology used to determine aid.

There are numerous changes to different aspects of the FAFSA: the length of the form, questions asked, the calculation of a family's ability to contribute, introduction of new vocabulary, ability to create an FSA ID without a Social Security Number, and the requirement to consent to data sharing with the IRS. Additional changes are detailed in other answers.

Changes to FAFSA questions:

• The number of questions will be reduced and the application will maximize the use of previously collected data.
• Some questions will have additional available responses to better describe an applicant’s unique circumstances.
• The form will include new demographic questions about an applicant’s gender and race/ethnicity, but students will be offered a choice of “Prefer Not to Answer.” Schools and state agencies will notbe able to see a contributor’s responses to these questions and this information will not be used to calculate aid.
• Students will be able to list up to 20 schools on their FAFSA via the online application.
• Foster, homeless, and unaccompanied youth—as well as applicants who cannot provide parental information—will be able to complete the form with a provisional independent student determination and receive a calculated SAI.

Additional FAFSA process improvements:

• Resources for completing the FAFSA form will be expanded to the 11 most common languages spoken in the United States.
• Information connected to a student’s and other contributors’ FSA ID will be automatically populated in the form each year.
• Certain information provided in the new FAFSA form will be carried over to the applicant’s form the following year; the greatest benefits of this will be felt in the second year of the new FAFSA (for the 2025/26 application).
• Applicants may continue to receive support in completing the FAFSA form from financial professionals, but will need to complete and submit the form themselves.

The SAI is a number that determines each student’s eligibility for certain types of federal student aid and will replace the Expected Family Contribution (EFC).

• SAI will determine eligibility for all aid except for determining minimum and maximum Pell Grants.
• Pell Grant will be based on Dependency, Marital Status, adjusted gross income (AGI), Poverty Level, and Enrollment Status.
• EFC could never go below 0, but the SAI can be as low as negative $1,500 (-$1,500).
• SAI formula removes the state and other tax income exclusion.
• SAI formula eliminates the family farm and small business asset exclusions–families have to report.
• Income protection allowances are updated to higher amounts.
• Number in college is eliminated so that SAI will not take into consideration the number of family members in college.
• For FAFSA filers with divorced parents, the parent who should file the FAFSA is the one who provided a greater portion of student’s financial support and no longer who the student lived with the most.

The benefits of FAFSA simplification include:

• A more streamlined application process.
• Expanded eligibility for federal student aid.
• Expanded eligibility for the Federal Pell Grant.
• Reduced barriers for certain student populations.
• A better user experience for the FAFSA form.
• Enhanced data sharing with the IRS to simplify the applicant's experience.

Additional benefits for certain student populations include:

• Ability to be assigned a “provisional independent” status to receive a calculated Student Aid Index (SAI) while independent student status is being verified.
• Students who have their independent student status approved by a financial aid administrator will be eligible for a renewal of their dependency status in subsequent years if their circumstances remain unchanged.
• Ability for family members without Social Security Numbers to create an FSA Logon by providing ab email, address and answering supplemental questions to verify their identity.
• Eligibility for the Pell Grant is extended to incarcerated students.

Eligibility for federal student aid will be expanded in the following ways:

• Selective Service and drug conviction questions will be eliminated to reduce applicant barriers.
• New methodology will be introduced to calculate and determine applicant eligibility.
• The Expected Family Contribution (EFC) will be replaced with the Student Aid Index (SAI).
• The new need-analysis formula allows for a negative SAI calculation and implements separate eligibility criteria for Federal Pell Grants.
• Federal Pell Grant access will be expanded and linked to family size and federal poverty levels, which will allow more students and families from low-income backgrounds to qualify.
• Federal Pell Grant access will be restored to incarcerated students under specific rules and programs.

To complete the FAFSA, you and your parent(s), if you are a dependent student, will be required to consent to the IRS to share your tax information with the FAFSA processor. Each person required to provide their information on the FAFSA will need an FSA ID. It will be helpful to have records of child support received, net worth of investments, businesses and farms, if applicable. If the Federal processor is unable to retrieve your tax information from the IRS, you should also have the tax returns available (2022 tax returns for the 2024/25 academic year).

Family Size replaces the term “household size” on the FAFSA form. It captures the appropriate number of family members and dependents in the applicant’s household.

Students, spouses, parents, and stepparents (any contributors identified during the application process) will need to provide their consent to provide their Federal Tax Information (FTI) in the new Consent to Retrieve and Disclose Federal Tax Information section of the FAFSA for federal student aid eligibility. Once the required contributors are identified, the Federal processor will send an email to each with consent instructions. The consent lasts for that application year and will need to be given for all contributors every year the applicant submits a FAFSA.

It is vital that all contributors provide consent for direct data share. If any contributor to the FAFSA form does not provide consent, submission of the form will still be allowed. However, a Student Aid Index (SAI) will not be calculated, so the student will not be eligible to receive federal aid.

The new FAFSA form will include a “Parent Wizard,” an interactive worksheet that helps the applicant to determine which parent or parents they should be planning to include on their application.

• If the parents are married and their tax filing status was "married filing jointly” for the reporting year, then only one parent needs to create an FSA ID and provide consent on the FAFSA. Providing consent allows both parents' tax information from their tax return to be retrieved from the IRS.
• If the parents are married and their tax filing status was "married filing separately” for the reporting year, then they will both need to create an FSA ID and will both need to provide consent on the FAFSA, since their tax information is provided on separate tax returns.
• If the parents are separated or divorced, the Custodial Parent will need to create an FSA ID and provide consent on the FAFSA.

For dependent students, the Custodial Parent will be the parent who provided the most financial support, instead of the parent with whom the student lived more during the past 12 months. If both parents provided an exact equal amount of financial support, then this will typically be the parent with greater income or assets. The Custodial Parent will need to create an FSA ID to provide their information for the student’s FAFSA.

Each contributor will be asked to provide consent in a section of the FAFSA application form that provides details about what information is shared. When completing the FAFSA, students will be able to invite contributors to complete their section of the form by providing an email address and basic information for the contributor. That contributor (parent or spouse) will need to log in to the form with their FSA ID and will be able to consent to the data exchange. Alternatively, parents may start a FAFSA form on behalf of their student and invite the student to complete their section.

An FSA ID is the Account Username and Password needed to file a FAFSA form and used to log in to all Federal Student Aid products and tools on StudentAid.gov. There will be two-step verification for the FAFSA and all contributors must have an FSA ID to log into the online form.

Students and other contributors register for an FSA ID through the federal student aid website. Most continuing students will have created an FSA ID to file their FAFSA in previous years.

Every contributor to an applicant’s FAFSA form will need to create an FSA ID in order to provide consent for data share with the IRS. Federal Student Aid (FSA) recommends all parents create an FSA ID.

If you are married and filed taxes jointly, yes, your spouse will need an FSA ID to file their part of the FAFSA.

Yes, Federal Student Aid (FSA) has indicated that a process will be available for people without Social Security Numbers to create an FSA ID and access the FAFSA. In order to create and FSA ID, a contributor without an SSN will need to:

• Provide an email address that is not associated with another FSA ID account
• Provide a mailing address
• Answer a series of questions to verify their identity

For most individuals creating an FSA ID without SSN, the results of identity authentication are immediate. If the federal processor is unable to authenticate an individual’s identity, they will be provided with a phone number and instructions on their next steps.

Yes, contributors will need to consent to direct data share with the IRS for the FAFSA every year, but only once a year when completing the form. Once the consent is granted it cannot be revoked.

Yes. Even if a tax return has not been completed, the applicant and all other contributors must provide consent in order for the student to be considered eligible for federal financial aid. Note that if taxes were not filed and no filing extension has been obtained, the applicant may not be eligible for Title IV federal student aid.

Yes. Throughout the 2024/25 FAFSA, there are several opportunities to update your consent approval. You can log in to StudentAid.Gov and update your consent on your dashboard.

No. The applicant and other contributors will each have their own section of the FAFSA form to complete. According to the Department of Education, much of the applicant’s tax return information, including information from their spouse and parents, will come directly from the IRS and will not be viewable by the student and other contributors.

No. The applicant and other contributors will each have their own section of the FAFSA form to complete. According to the Department of Education, much of the applicant’s tax return information, including information from their spouse and parents, will come directly from the IRS and will not be viewable by the student and other contributors.

Yes. Foreign tax filers can enter tax information manually on their student's FAFSA.