<p>My son and I received an email from FAFSA today about an FAFSA correction made and processed just today. I hadn't made any changes to it in about 3 weeks. When i clicked on the link to the SAR, it showed a new brand new transaction with changes I hadn't made, and my EFC raised by about $3,000. It said it was signed by both student and parent, even though we didn't make the changes. I called FAFSA to ask about it, and was told that the college had made a change to my son's FAFSA - that when colleges verify our numbers from tax forms, they go in and make changes to our FAFSA. i asked him how it indicates that the school made it, and not me, and he said it doesn't. He said they had changed my (the mother's) income down by about $6,000 and had changed something in question 92 (he couldn't tell what sub category) down from about $3,000 to $0. I'm not sure how these two changes resulted in a $3,000 increase to our EFC, but that's what it said. </p>
<p>I called the college (it was the only college on the school list for this particular transaction) to ask about it, and was told by the person who answered the phone in the financial aid office that the school can't change our FAFSA - we must have made the change. When I described my conversation with the guy at FAFSA, she said I'd have to talk to our FA counselor, but he wasn't in today. So, now I have to wait until Monday to call him back.</p>
<p>So...is this normal? Do schools go in and change our actual FAFSA instead of just using the information we give on their own forms? Why does it say the student and parent both signed this transaction, when we didn't?</p>
<p>Yes schools can and do (in fact are required to) change data on your FAFSA if they find incorrect information has been entered on FAFSA.</p>
<p>You can go to FAFSA and download the latest transaction. It will show what changes have been made. Go through it line by line and compare it with your original FAFSA to see what changes have been made.</p>
<p>^^Agree, print it out and compare to the original. Have a copy of your taxes and carefully compare line by line to make sure you didn’t pick up an incorrect line from the tax forms or misinterpret the question on the FAFSA.</p>
<p>Thanks - I feel better knowing this is normal. You would think the page would say something like “correction done by school” instead of making it looks like the student and parent did it, just to avoid confusion!</p>
<p>thanks so much for answering quickly!</p>
<p>Did you find out why these decreases ended up increasing your EFC?</p>
<p>Are you sure he decreased #92? Isn’t that concerning assets and 529 accounts?</p>
<p>Question 92 is questions regarding things like education tax credits and financial aid (such as taxable scholarships and WS) included the AGI. The items in question 92 are used to reduce income in the EFC formula. So removing them would increase the EFC.</p>
<p>It’s really weird, but a lot of students/parents misread question 92. For whatever reason, they put their income earned from their regular jobs for the taxable income earned from work study/assistanceships/fellowships … and students often put all of their aid (including loans) for taxable portion of grants/scholarships (and usually NONE of it was taxable - loans should never be included, by the way). When those amounts are removed, it can make the EFC jump a lot.</p>