FAFSA submission date vs received date - curious about the time frame

Paying for College
1

<p>Not really an important issue - more my curiosity wanting to be satisfied. This is our 1st time submitting FAFSA. After reading so much (on CC, college finaid page etc) about how important it is to submit FAFSA early I was a bit worried when we did not get ours completed until feb 3rd. Got email from Ds college saying they received it March 5th. Which makes all my panicking pretty pointless. More than a month between our submitting it and them getting it - Is that normal? Made me realise I don't quite understand how it all works. How exactly do colleges get the info? Do they just go online every now and then and download all the SARs with their code on it?</p>

2

<p>Wow! is that delay due to ....backlog..... or something to do
with electronic signature v paper signature.....</p>

<p>Curious :)</p>

3

<p>I have no idea - it is not because of paper signature because we submitted everything electronically and it was processed and we received the SAR electronically the next day. So I know it was in the FAFSA 'system' . So is it not normal for it to take this long for the school to get it? We were pretty surprised but, as I said, we are first timers.</p>

4

<p>When we filed ds (2/15), we were told by ds college they they receive them electronically (if filed electronically) immediate after they are approved. His college then has to go through them and update their files on their end. They had his by the fourth day we did his and the college just posted that they received it online yesterday ~ 3/12. I was worried about that also and just called the fin aid office and they said that it was received. This was a week after I received my electronic SAR report.</p>

5

<p>Your FAFSA is considered "filed" at the latest as of the date the SAR is processed. I called one school that didn't have d's FAFSA listed several weeks after we got the SAR. The response? "Oh, we won't start downloading them until March 1." So while you've filed the SAR, the school may not have "received" it until much letter because they simply haven't gotten to them yet.</p>