ED Provides Updates on Both 2024-25 and 2025-26 Paper FAFSA Processing
By Maria Carrasco, NASFAA Staff Reporter
The Department of Education (ED) last week gave several updates to both 2024-25 and 2025-26 paper FAFSA processing, including that ED has officially begun processing 2025-26 paper FAFSAs.
ED clarified that institutional corrections for 2025-26 paper FAFSAs are available via the FAFSA Partner Portal, and student corrections for those paper forms will be available in “early” 2025.
Additionally, ED stated that it has deployed a fix for an error in 2024-25 paper FAFSAs, which instructed the applicant to provide missing student personal information even though all required personal information was already provided. This error resulted in incorrectly rejected Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) with reject code 9 and comment code 023. ED stated it has begun reprocessing impacted ISIRs and will send these reprocessed ISIRs to institutions.
ED noted that it has encountered issues with applicants and contributors who already have a StudentAid.gov account and whose information on their 2024-25 paper FAFSA did not match their existing StudentAid.gov information. The department stressed that the data on the paper FAFSA must be an exact match to an existing StudentAid.gov account.
ED has identified applicants who have faced this issue and are returning their applications to them. Applicants and contributors with internet access are encouraged to review and correct their information at StudentAid.gov.
ED noted that incarcerated applicants will receive communication from ED with an alternate resolution. Additionally, institutions who participate in the Second Chance Pell Experiment or have a Prison Education Program (PEP) will receive an email with further instructions for helping their students resolve the issue, ED wrote.
Publication Date: 12/3/2024
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