<p>My son's college made a change to his FAFSA information based on the verification forms we sent in. We only found this out when he received an email last week informing him that his financial aid that was originally awarded a few months ago has been substantially reduced. We find this puzzling since our financial situation is virtually unchanged from a year ago and he received an extremely generous financial aid package last year.</p>
<p>We called the university and the financial aid person said she could not give out specific information over the phone, but she said we could find out the changes that were made by logging into my son's FAFSA account. As of this time (5 working days after the college made the changes) no updates made by the college have appeared yet.</p>
<p>Does anyone know how long it will take before we can see the changes the college made on the FAFSA site? We're on pins and needles over this. </p>
<p>We could make an appointment to see a financial aid staff member in person, but I naturally want to have all of the information at my fingertips before we take that step.</p>
<p>Thanks for any information you can provide.</p>
<p>There aren’t any new Student Aid Reports (SARs) showing up at the FAFSA site - only the ones from our original submission in January plus the updated submission from when we used the IRS Data Retrieval Tool in May. I’m waiting for the updated SAR (based on the changes the college made) to show up so I can make the line-by-line comparisons.</p>
<p>As far as the verification forms, we sent in a Dependent Student Verification Worksheet (listing the members of the family, and verifying that we’re not receiving SNAP benefits and no child support is being paid), the Student and Parent Verification Addendums (verifying that we used the IRS Data Retrieval Tool for our tax returns) and the 2013 Parent Expense and Income Sheet. We sent in these same forms last year.</p>
<p>The financial aid officer did say that it may take a few days for the new SAR to appear in my son’s FAFSA online account but I’m not sure what “a few days” means.</p>
<p>My son’s college made a change to our FAFSA and both him and I got an email from the federal site stating that a change had been made. I then went in and was able to see the changes made to the SAR and EFC. Did you receive this email? If not, then I would assume no changes have been processed.</p>
<p>The timing depends on how often the school sends FAFSA changes to the processor. If they only send them once a week or so, it will take a few more days. Did you have an IRA or 401K rollover, by any chance?</p>
<p>Thanks for a possible explanation for the delay, kelsmom. I didn’t realize that the information might not get transmitted instantaneously. I’ll wait another week and see what happens.</p>
<p>I’m updating this for the benefit of people who might be in a similar situation. After waiting for more than a week to find out what changes my son’s college made to his FAFSA application, he logged into his FAFSA account this morning and found this message, “Current Application Status: Processing” along with a note indicating that it can take up to 3 business days for the FAFSA changes to be processed. So, we still don’t know what changes the college made, but they at least submitted the actual changes to FAFSA today.</p>
<p>So, the moral of the story is, if you get an email from your college telling you they adjusted your financial aid based on changes they made to your FAFSA application, it can take well over a week to find out what the changes are.</p>