Other glitches remain baked into the form. For example, some school names are getting cut off on the FAFSA. This can be confusing if a school you’d like to send your FAFSA to has multiple campuses. If this happens, students can do an internet search for a school’s Federal School Code, and use that number to pull it up in the FAFSA. The situation is evolving day by day. The latest list of known FAFSA glitches and workarounds is available on StudentAid.gov. You can’t correct submitted answers until mid-March If you submitted your portion of the FAFSA but realized you made an error, you will have to wait several weeks until you can fix it. Students will receive an email with their FAFSA Submission Summary — which details submitted answers, Pell Grant eligibility and their Student Aid Index — once the Department of Education processes their completed form, which is slated to start in mid-March. Then, you can make any necessary corrections to your submitted answers. Even if you make a correction later on, it won’t change the submission time stamp on your FAFSA, McCarthy says. This could be important for students applying for financial aid that is first come, first served or that has an early application deadline. Undocumented parents can’t access the form yet There’s a new process for undocumented parents to request an FSA ID this year — but it’s not working yet, and there’s no timeline for when it will be. Until this issue is fixed, students whose parents don’t have Social Security numbers (SSNs) cannot submit the FAFSA. Taking some time to get organized now can help you complete the FAFSA more easily once it’s available. If you’re a parent without an SSN, continue to reach out to support structures, like college access organizations or school counselors, Colón says. “The moment that the tool becomes available, it’s critical to get in there and get started,” says Colón. “While it is a greatly simplified form, it’s not going to be for students whose parents don’t have an SSN, so it’s going to be really important that they get all their financial paperwork ready as soon as possible to give themselves the time they will need to complete the form.” Invitation process for contributors This year, students and parents fill out and submit their relevant portion of the FAFSA separately. Either the student starts and completes their portion of the FAFSA and “invites” the parent, or a parent can start and complete their section, then they invite the student. That’s different from past years, when a dependent student and their parents had to sit down together and fill out a single form. “It’s a role-based process, where it was not before,” says Jodi Vanden Berge, director of college planning and outreach at EducationQuest, a Nebraska-based college access nonprofit.
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