@MCarltx Yeah, first FAFSA said they had no way of telling me who made the change. But after seeing that 9 schools were removed, she was able to tell me that the only school on my list made the change!
@anonstem that’s crazy. That school must have really wanted you! Talk about cut throat admissions.
Go back into the fafsa. You will see a history of the colleges where you submitted the fafsa. Your other colleges are there.
Could you please explain the responsibility of the financial aid officers at the schools with regard to required changes they make to FAFSA forms?
Folks…do a side by side with your submitted fafsa (which IS there) and the revised one. What is the difference? If it’s an error, ask the school to explain. They will. We had a change made that was a mistake…and the school corrected it.
But you know…there are MANY fafsa forms submitted with mistakes on them. And these include ones which populate from the DRT. The info on your whole fafsa needs to be consistent…and if it’s not, the school is required to adjust what you submitted.
In most cases, this adjustment is only for the school that makes the change. Others don’t see it.
@anonstem, you will not have to add the schools back. Those schools have the previous transaction, and they will pay on that transaction. I assume the school in question deleted the other schools in order to make sure that the changes were limited to their school - the other schools were not affected by the changes - although I don’t know how they deleted the other schools, since aid officers can no longer see any other school information!!! I think if you make the update in a particular federal system, the update is only made for the school that did the update - so the other schools would not be included on that transaction (they don’t actually remove any schools to do it).
Just so everyone knows, schools are required to make updates if they determine they are needed. And yes, depending on how they do it, other schools might get those updates. If you believe a school made an update in error, you should contact them to ask about it … and make sure you talk with someone who is willing to explain it. Do not allow them to brush you off - you can go above their heads to a manager. Schools do make mistakes - so it is important to find out what happened, in case there was a mistake (and if no mistake, at least you will understand why they did what the did).
If the untaxed income number was changed, maybe they added pretax retirement contributions back in?
@kelsmom It is correct that the school can’t see other schools but they have the option to just list their school as the only school. I think this is outrageous since one can’t assume that all other schools have downloaded the FAFSA SAR since some wait till admission offers.
This is what the FAFSA person from helpline told me:
“When this school updated this FAFSA, the application was updated just to list them as the only school, as they were
the ones that made the correction.”
What you don’t seem to be hearing…your previously submitted and processed FAFSA forms are STILL THERE.
If you had updated yourself, and deleted all,thenother colleges for the ONE submission…the older submissions would,also have remained.
The school did NOT delete all of your submitted FAFSA forms. Once submitted and processed…they are not able to,be deleted.
What happened is the school made a correction and just for itself. So it sort of,submitted just to itself.
The other schools can still,access your previously submitted and processed FAFSA forms…and so can you.
@kelsmom please just tell me I’m correct!
“It is correct that the school can’t see other schools but they have the option to just list their school as the only school.” This is not correct for all schools. It depends on the software they use when making their edits.
@thumper1 is correct - all of the above.
They may not be able to tell you, but when you login with your FSAID, you can scroll down and click on “View Correction History” to view any changes made and who made them.
That is not what they confirmed for me on live chat the other day. They said that once a change is made to your fafsa at one school, any other fafsa schools on the list will also get the change.
If the change was ONLY submitted to one school…NO OTHER school can see that change. It wasn’t submitted to them.
that is what the OP said happened.
@thumper1 I’m confused by what you are saying. The OP said the school changed the FAFSA. When I asked them about that, they said yes, even if one school makes a change to the FAFSA, any other schools still listed on the FAFSA would see that change.
“They may not be able to tell you, but when you login with your FSAID, you can scroll down and click on “View Correction History” to view any changes made and who made them”
Not true - you can click on View Correction History to view the SAR as a result of that change but you’ll have to compare line by line with your previous SAR to see what changes were made. Also, you cannot see who made the changes if you have more than one college in the list. It could also be a prior college that was on the list before you removed it (to make space for another one if you applied to more than 10 colleges)
I was told that whoever is on the FAFSA list WILL get the changes. (Not in my case, since only one college was listed since the others were removed from the list).
@kelsmom - Just curious - do you work at a FA office?
@anonstem Yes, of course you have to do the comparison yourself, but it IS TRUE that the information is there. And there is a column on the main page that lists who made the change, in my case we only had “student” changes, but I would imaging in your case, that box would be filled by the school that made the change.
Example:
Status Submitted Submitted By Processed
02 Processed Successfully 10/18/2016 Student 10/19/2016 Make FAFSA Corrections
01 Processed Successfully 10/03/2016 Student 10/04/2016 Make FAFSA Corrections
Under each change, you have the option to View or Print the SAR; is this not what you are seeing?
@Fishnlines29 This is what I see
Status Submitted Submitted By Processed
03 Processed Successfully 03/24/2017 College 03/24/2017
02 Processed Successfully 12/18/2016 Student 12/19/2016
It just says college and not the college name
Oh, that’s a bummer. I’m still shocked they can do that. Doesn’t seem right.
If the fafsa is ONLY submitted to ONE school…there are NO OTHERS to see that submission.
The OP said that all the other schools were deleted. So ONLY the school on that submission can see the change.
Not sure why younare shocked that schools can make changes. Part of the financial aid staff job is to make sure that the information on the fafsa is correct. People put wrong marital status, wrong amounts, wrong number in college, wrong LOTS of things. Not all the information is taken frommthe DRT…which isntnfunctioning at all right now.
The financial aid officers MUST make corrections when errors are noted. They cannot award federally funded need based aid…when errors or inconsistencies are on the FAFSA.
But if you see a change and it’s a mistake…the student and family need to contact the financial,aid office to get an explanation. The finaid office might be correct. Then again…they do make mistakes. If it’s an error, they will correct it.
But the correct for THEIR school only.
If the other schools were deleted, yes. But that is not what I was saying, I said if other schools are listed on the FAFSA, they will ALSO see the change (which is what the OP also said she confirmed).
Sorry…but I don’t think you got a correct complete answer.
@kelsmom ??
Other schools cannot see other schools on the fafsa.
I was thinking this same thing.
Don’t be “shocked” that they can do this. The fact that you use the IRS data retrieval tool has no bearing on the college’s ability to change numbers. The Fafsa numbers have to match the IRS numbers only when YOU submit it. This is just a starting point. The college can then move numbers around based on the way that they calculate aid.
Each college has a certain way of calculating aid. The colleges that consider your tax-year 401k contributions as “funds available to pay for college” will add those contributions back into the number for your taxable income. So, if your 1040 taxable income was, say, $70,000 and you contributed $5,000 to your 401k (which would be untaxed income), the college will add the $5k back into your taxable income so that your income for Fafsa purposes becomes $75,000 and your EFC will increase. They consider 401k contributions discretionary during the college years.
The college can also make a professional judgment that is favorable to the family. This happened to us. We had a large, one-time withdrawal for a family emergency. The withdrawal significantly increased our income. We wrote a letter to the college and explained the situation. They agreed and subtracted the amount of the large, one-time withdrawal from our taxable income, which significantly decreased our EFC. So … our Fafsa didn’t “match” our IRS data, and it was “incorrect” for IRS purposes – BUT it was correct for Fafsa purposes.