ED Provides Details on Reprocessing of 2024-25 FAFSA Records for Three Separate Issues
By Hugh T. Ferguson, NASFAA Managing Editor
The Department of Education (ED) announced in late December that it had completed reprocessing for three 2024-25 FAFSA record errors. Those records concerned conflicting information, asset known issues, and incorrect reject codes.
The announcement explains that FAFSAs were reprocessed (Reason Code 12) when assets for a student (or their contributors) were collected by the FAFSA form and used in the Student Aid Index (SAI) calculation, even when they met criteria under the law for an exemption from reporting assets.
According to the department, 21,660 records were reprocessed to correct this error. Roughly one-third resulted in a decreased SAI, and the remainder saw no SAI change. However, 21 records had no SAI after re-processing, which will require a correction to provide the missing data needed to calculate an SAI.
Additionally, several paper FAFSA applications (Reason Code 13) were in a rejected status because of a data inconsistency in a backend system. According to the department, 2,413 records were reprocessed. Of these the reject was resolved for 1,011 records and 1,402 were still rejected, which requires resolution. ED noted that the rejection reasons for the latter group are now set appropriately on the FAFSA Submission Summary.
The third group of reprocessed FAFSAs (Reason Code 14) concerns conflicting information when FTI and manually reported non-filer status exist on the same ISIR. This error resulted in 183,087 records being reprocessed, 5,927 of which have been successfully completed. However, 177,157 records remain rejected and still require resolution. According to ED, the rejection reasons for the latter group are “now set appropriately on the FAFSA Submission Summary and ISIR and should be dealt with in line with instructions for resolving rejects based upon the listed comment code.”
Further, the department noted that records may still be rejected and require corrections to calculate the Student Aid Index (SAI) if the applicant and their contributors did not answer certain financial questions (i.e., foreign income excluded from taxation, pension rollovers, IRA rollovers, and Earned Income Tax Credit) because they initially indicated they were a non-tax filer. Students and their contributors may make the correction themselves, and schools can make corrections in the FAFSA Partner Portal based on documentation they have collected.
Previous guidance in GEN-24-71 permitted schools to resolve the conflicting information prior to reprocessing. If the school followed this guidance, they may continue to disburse on the previously resolved ISIR transaction, provided they follow guidance in Chapter 5 of the Application and Verification Guide in the 2024-25 FSA Handbook reviewing all incoming ISIRs. If the record was updated to note that the student was a tax filer, the record was not reprocessed.
There is still ongoing conflicting information allowing FTI and manually reported non-filer status to exist on the same ISIR, but ED noted that the issue has improved since a November release. According to ED a fix for this issue is planned for deployment in the first quarter of 2025.
Publication Date: 1/3/2025
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