<p>Today I got an email from the FAFSA people saying there was a correction made to my filed FAFSA. For some reason, a college (don't know which one), made "corrections" to my FAFSA, and now my EFC is a whopping $5,000 more than it was before. What am i supposed to do now? I'll lose so much grant aid and stuff.</p>
<p>On a side note, I had to submit the FAFSA twice, cause I applied to more than 10 colleges. Im not even considering the second set of colleges that I sent the FAFSA, but the change was made to the 2nd FAFSA. </p>
<p>And the thing is, I haven't sent any college my parent's tax returns or anything. So I don't know why it got changed. </p>
<p>Any help please? Its kind of urgent, Cause this means I will be losing almost 10K Plus of Grant Aid if it happens to all the universities I've applied to.</p>
<p>*On a side note, I had to submit the FAFSA twice, cause I applied to more than 10 colleges. Im not even considering the second set of colleges that I sent the FAFSA, but the change was made to the 2nd FAFSA. *</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter that you’re not considering the colleges from the second batch of schools. A Financial Aid officer noticed some kind of error and made a correction. You can call and ask what the reason was.</p>
<p>Are you saying that your parents haven’t yet filed their taxes? Or are you saying that you haven’t sent copies to the schools? If your parents have filed taxes, then the info may already be available to the schools electronically. </p>
<p>How does an EFC increase of $5k cause you to lose $10k in grants? </p>
<p>Did you count a parent as a family member in college? Did you count grandparents as household members? </p>
<p>Do any of your schools use CSS Profile? If so, is that what you mean by saying that you haven’t sent in tax forms to the schools?</p>
<p>As a side note, it looks like you’re a US citzen and live abroad with your parents. </p>
<p>It looks like you think you’re going to get instate rates at a UC after your first year. How would you get that? Are your parents going to move to Calif soon? If not, you won’t get instate after a year. You won’t be a Calif resident just because you’re going to school in Calif.</p>
<p>from my understanding of the FAFSA you don’t submit 2 when you have more than 10 schools. You take off a couple schools and add the others on, once they receive your information you can switch them back-maybe that is why you are having issues with the change. Call the financial aid office of the school you plan on attending and see what what your package is from them</p>
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<p>Once the student’s FAFSA has been changed, the new figures are going to determine the student’s eligibility for federal aid at ALL schools - it’s not going to vary from one school to the next.</p>
<p>The OP needs to contact the financial aid office of one of her schools (doesn’t matter which one) and ask if they can identify the school that submitted the change. Then, the OP needs to contact that school and request an explanation for the change.</p>
<p>There are a number of reasons why the change might have been made and, depending on the reason, the student might be able to convince the school to change it back.</p>
<p>If not, and if it’s not a school the student plans on attending, one other option might be to decline your offer of admission to that school, delete that school from your FAFSA list . . . and then try to convince one of the other schools to change the figures back to what they were to start with! </p>
<p>But start by talking to the school that made the change and see what they say.</p>
<p>I see from your earlier posts that your parents are US citizens, living abroad, and they haven’t been filing taxes in the US. (wow…amazing that people like that expect their kids to get aid here when they’ve been contributing NOTHING, but that’s another story).</p>
<p>Have your parents filed their missing tax returns going back a few years? </p>
<p>While you can try eliminating that one school that changed your FAFSA, if the change was legitimate (such as including people in the household that shouldn’t be counted or counting a parent as a student), then your favorite school isn’t likely going to change it back.</p>
<p>That said, you have another issue that I mentioned above. You seem to think that you’re going to get instate tuition at a UC for soph year forward after “living in Calif” for a year. That will NOT qualify you for instate tuition for several reasons. One of the main reasons is that you’re only living in Calif for education purposes. Another is that your family is going to be paying the $20k+ per year that FA isn’t covering, so you won’t be an “independent student.” Your residency will be based on where your parents live, not where you live.</p>
<p>I just had horrible experience. I’m appalled! I received notification yesterday that a change was made to FAFSA. When I checked, it was made by “college” and after having to study the paperwork, the change was that the college incorrectly added $53,600 as income (92f)!! This changed the family contribution from 4,500 to 27,800! This amount is on my tax return as a ROLLOVER amount due to divorce decree. According to FAFSA Representative, the college has every right to “correct” when they think they’ve found a discrepancy. However, the FAFSA representative confirmed that a ROLLOVER is NOT to be reported on FAFSA. So… this info instantly gets sent to ALL your student’s colleges. You are at the mercy of a college’s computer system or bean counter trying to catch cheats because there is no redress other than to go to that college (which took some doing to find out which college made this erroneous “correction”) and ALL the other colleges involved. As an unemployed recently divorced single parent - this is heartbreaking and totally unacceptable!</p>
<p>Calm down … this can be fixed. Did you do a direct transfer from the IRS using the tool on your FAFSA? Or did you provide the school with a tax transcript? Or did you send a copy of your tax return? In any of these cases, the school would have been made aware of the untaxed IRA amount … but they may not have been aware that it was a rollover. In the first two cases, it is up to you to notify them - in writing, with a signature -that the amount was a rollover (they may even ask for proof). In the third case, was that clearly marked on the return you provided as “ROLLOVER?” If not, how would they know? If so, they may simply have missed it.</p>
<p>No matter what, this is certainly not an issue to worry about. Simply contact the school and get it straightened out. You may need to provide documentation, but again, that should not be an issue.</p>
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