Hi,
So I am currently freaking out right now. I just got an email today saying “a financial aid officer at my school corrected my FAFSA.” I quickly logged into FAFSA to see the corrections made, and noticed my EFC had increased from 0 to 311. And this correction was also sent to the 9 other schools on that FAFSA transaction.
I know my EFC change isn’t drastic, but every dollar counts given my family’s financial situation. What stings is that I know this correction is wrong. Why? Because when we filled out FAFSA, all our financial information was transferred DIRECTLY from the IRS using the IRS retrieval tool. Nothing was typed in manually, so we couldn’t have “made a mistake,” and which also should correspond to our previous EFC of 0. But here’s another issue: because we used the IRS retrieval tool, all our financial information on the SARS report shows as “transferred from IRS,” meaning I can’t even see what change was made. I have looked through the information that is visible on the SARS report and nothing has changed from our previous report, so whatever the change made that increased our EFC should be part of the information showing as “transferred from IRS.”
This correction also came after 3 schools received the additional information they asked for, like copies of my parents W2 forms and tax returns.
I am frustrated even more because I can’t make another FAFSA correction to correct this correction because I can’t even view the information that shows as “transferred from IRS.”
I have read posts about financial aid offices making false corrections, and I really don’t wanna be screwed over by someone else’s mistake. I guess my question is does anyone know how to view information on SARS that shows as “transferred from IRS?” If I can view that information, I can be able to see the mistake made and have it fixed, or if its not a mistake (which I highly doubt) then I can at least understand what the error was.
I’ll be calling FAFSA tomorrow, but I am very stressed. I thought I was finally done with the whole “applying for financial aid” process. Now I am worried this new correction will affect or delay my aid offers. I have a financial aid deadline on the 15th, so please, if anyone has any ideas, I would heavily appreciate it.