My son was finishing the process of deciding between several schools, including Syracuse. Today, we got a cryptic email from FAFSA saying our FAFSA had been corrected (didn’t say by whom or how). I checked the new FAFSA online, and the significant change involved boosting line 91, net worth of parent investments, by about 10K. It took a call to FAFSA to find out the change was sent in by Syracuse. FAFSA had no other info for me. Moreover (and this is the first thing that seems crazy to me) FAFSA said that any school can alter your FAFSA and that altered version is then sent to all the other schools, which can affect your awards there. Even crazier though is what I learned when I called Syracuse: a FA counselor told me what they’d done was look at the parent investments listed in the CSS and the FAFSA and “reconcile” them by picking the larger one. (After doing so, they also lowered my son’s FA award). I noted to the FA counselor that the CSS was filed in the fall and the FAFSA in January, and so the obvious logical inference is that the parents’ investment amount dropped in the interim. (Surely this happened to many others, since the stock market dropped a good bit in that period). Plus, there’s no provision I’m aware of for correcting or updating the CSS. The FA counselor said their policy was their policy – and that our only recourse would be (get this) to obtain and make copies of all the documents reflecting our investments and send those to Syracuse w/a request they reconsider. The only good thing is that we were able to go back online and change our FAFSA back to the (correct) way it was w/o any problem.
If you are no longer interested in Syracuse you can delete them from your FAFSA.
I know schools have an obligation to correct mistakes on FAFSA filings. Perhaps @kelsmom can make a recommendation on how to handle this. I’m not sure your correction will stand. It may have to be done by a school.
Schools are required to make changes to the FAFSA when they see something that is not correct.
If the school made an error, you need to provide them with the documentation that corrects this.
However…keep in mind this may not help you at all with Syracuse…it’s a Profile School…and the info on the Profile is really what is used to determine institutional need based aid at Syracuse. So…what was put on your Profile is wht really mattered. And as you know…the assets are as of the day of filing…so,what was on your Profile is what was used.
The way to correct or update the Profile is to make the change on a paper copy of the Profile and send that corrected copy to the school(s) with an explanation of the change.
Meanwhile, even if you’re no longer interested in Syracuse, I’d have that documentation handy, just in case you need it for any of the other schools your son is considering.
FWIW, most parents I know keep documentation of asset values on the day they file FAFSA and/or Profile . . . just in case a school ever asks. It’s hardly ever needed, but, as you’ve discovered, if there ever is a problem, it’s helpful to have that documentation ready.
Did you think Syracuse would make a change without documentation to prove that the investment value was not what YOU said it was on the Profile? And again il reminding you…what you have on the FAFSA isn’t really going to matter much to Syracuse. Syracuse is a Profile,school…and the Profile information is what is used to award institutional need based aid…not the FAFSA.
Did you submit the Profile to any other schools in October? If so, you want to contact THOSE colleges and find out how to deal with your investment income loss.
It is April 22. Do you have your financial aid packages from the other schools? Has your kiddo checked his student portals to see if ANY schools are requesting additional information from you? Has your kiddo checked his a financial aid section for his other colleges?
I don’t see how this “correction” by Syracuse can stand. Everyone knows that assets are reported as of the day the form is completed/filed. This is true for both FAFSA and Profile. If the forms aren’t completed/filed on the same day, especially if there’s a period of months between the two forms, it’s obvious that the asset numbers probably won’t be identical. By changing the FAFSA parent asset number, Syracuse has now introduced an error into the process – parent asset information on the FAFSA does not match the date that FAFSA was completed/filed.
As thumper1 mentions above, Syracuse is a Profile school, so a change in FAFSA shouldn’t make a difference for Syracuse institutional aid; it should only matter for federal and state (if applicable) aid. And the feds don’t need the FAFSA and Profile to be “reconciled;” they understand that the forms may be completed on different dates and they just need the FAFSA information to be accurate as of the day that FAFSA was completed/filed.
OP: even if your son isn’t still interested bin Syracuse, I would pursue this up the chain with Syracuse FA, if their “correction” does in fact alter your FAFSA information for all the other schools.
Several folks have commented that what’s on the FAFSA doesn’t matter to Syracuse since they are a Profile school. But the initial FA award my son received in March from Syracuse they based on the FAFSA numbers. When they subsequently changed our FAFSA to make it match the CSS number, they lowered his award. If the FAFSA didn’t matter to them and they intended to rely on the CSS Profile, why didn’t they just give us a lower award initially, and not screw up our FAFSA?
Good question. What changed when the award was reduced? Institutional grant? Pell grant? Federal loans? Work-study? A combination of two or more?
Why do you think the initial,award was based on the FAFSA? If that is the case…the financial aid department screwed up…and they were very right to look at your Profile…which is what they usually use to determine the awarding of institutional need based aid.
You absolutely can get this changed…you simply need to provide the documentation to Syracuse regarding the assets and their value. I have to say…it sounds like you don’t want to provide that documention.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting what you are writing here. But Syracuse said you could provide your investment documentation…right?
In the meantime…if any of your other schools are Profile schools where you filed with the higher asset amount…check those awards…and your student needs to check their student portal.
If they are FAFSA ONLY schools…no problem.
Well… if the Syracuse FAFSA change resulted in a higher parent asset amount that any FAFSA only school also sees, that probably is a problem.
Are there any schools out there that rely 100% on a CSS? Don’t they all require the FAFSA also to award any federal aid first, and then their own institutional aid?
Agreed…not 100% reliance on the Profile…but for INSTITUTIONAL aid, Syracuse uses the Profile, not the FAFSA information.
@BelknapPoint so this parent needs to contact ALL of the colleges…
Since he resubmitted the FAFSA…did he also link to the IRS Data Retrieval Tool again?
That really isn’t fair of them. I did the FAFSA and CSS on the same day but we did a few print outs on our investments as the market dropped pretty badly in that time frame. I also paid every bill I had before reporting our bank account balance but I did keep copies of balances on every account the day I filed. No one’s accounts would be the same every day of the year and I think they really overstepped the bounds by changing the FAFSA.
That seems completely wrong. Syracuse is free to award their own financial aid however they see fit, but changing asset values to the values they were on a different date could mess up financial aid at all sorts of schools. Even at Syracuse, a change like that could disqualify a student from receiving a Pell grant which is supposed to be based strictly on the FAFSA calculation.
Yes…to the above. It could really mess things up…I totally agree.
The OP was given the choice of providing documentation about his assets to Syracuse. For some reason, the OP doesn’t seem to think that is something he needs to do.
Things we do not know…for all we know, there is investment interest income or some other ticker on the taxes that forced Syracuse to make this change.