As of March 25th, the Department of Education has transmitted over four million ISIRs to institutions around the country for the upcoming academic year and expects to process another two million FAFSA forms by the end of March. Students will be able to make updates and corrections to their FAFSA forms in the first half of April.
Federal officials are urging schools to make sure that their systems are prepared to receive these transmissions and provided a list of resources for any who are still struggling with the Better FAFSA transition.
Read the full update below.
POSTED DATE: March 25, 2024
AUTHOR: Federal Student Aid
ELECTRONIC ANNOUNCEMENT ID: GENERAL-24-27
SUBJECT: Update on 2024-25 FAFSA Processing
This electronic announcement provides an update for institutions, states, and vendors on processing 2024-25 FAFSA forms as they continue to receive Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) and package financial aid offers for students. To date, the U.S. Department of Education (Department) has processed more than 4.3 million FAFSA forms and delivered ISIRs to the majority of schools, states, and designated scholarship organizations. The Department is on track to complete processing roughly 6 million FAFSA forms and transmitting the resulting ISIRs to schools, states, and scholarship agencies by the end of March.
We have also published a new FAFSA Status tracker on the Knowledge Center to provide updates on FAFSA submission and processing. We will refresh the tracker twice a week providing numbers of FAFSA forms submitted to the Department and FAFSA forms processed by the Department.
Timeline Updates
To assist our partners in planning, we are providing updated timelines to help institutions better prepare to package and originate aid for students. The Department continues to encourage schools, states, and scholarship organizations to provide flexibility and as much time as possible for students to make important enrollment decisions.
- The ability for students to make update and corrections to their FAFSA forms will be available in the first half of April. In advance of that implementation, the Department will provide detailed information to partners, students, and families on how to correct the most common FAFSA form errors including no signatures and selecting ‘yes’ to applying for unsubsidized loans only (Question 8).
- The Department will start reprocessing applications impacted by a previously identified issue shortly after student corrections are made available. The Department recently identified a vendor issue that was incorrectly calculating the Student Aid Index for records of dependent students with assets. This issue affected less than 10 percent of the 4 million records that have already been processed and has been resolved since the issue was identified. As these records are reprocessed, they will be identified as a system-generated transaction in the transaction source field (ISIR field 16). On March 22, 2024, President Biden signed H.R. 2882, the “Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024” into law which level funds the Federal Pell Grant program with a Pell Grant maximum of $7,395. No additional reprocessing will be required to adjust Pell Grant awards.
- As many institutions plan for summer terms and crossover payment periods (a payment period that begins prior to July 1 but ends after July 1), the Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) System will be available in the second half of April. EDExpress 2024–25, Release 2.0, which includes the Pell Grant and Direct Loan modules, will be also available in the second half of April. Detailed information about the April 2024 COD System update and EDExpress 2024-25, Release 2.0 will be provided in Electronic Announcements posted to the Knowledge Center with the system releases.
Institutions and states should consider these updates as they consider aid application and commitment deadlines for students. We encourage states and institutions to take steps to make sure all students have equitable access to aid and the opportunity to fully consider aid packages when making enrollment decisions.
Additional Resources and Reminders
To help support institutions and states, in addition to regular Knowledge Center updates, the Department will be holding regular webinars to cover important updates and provide details on topics that are the subject of large numbers of questions. Webinar announcements will be posted on the Knowledge Center and recordings of all webinars will be posted on the FSA Training Center.
While many schools have worked hard to complete their FTI-SAIG mailbox set up, there are still institutions that have not yet completed their agreements. While we initially shared information about the new FTI-SAIG mailbox set up in September, we recognize there may be confusion for schools with multiple mailboxes for branch campuses. The Department has been directly reaching out to institutions with outstanding agreements. As soon as possible, we ask that you complete the enrollment process or confirm with us that you no longer need the mailbox. These institutions will be furthered delayed in accessing their ISIRs until the agreements are in place.
Need Help?
In the coming week, ISIR delivery will proceed on a regular processing schedule of 1 to 3 days following FAFSA form submission. We encourage institutions and states to proceed with processing ISIRs and preparing aid packages for students as quickly as possible. If a school needs assistance getting started, the Department continues to provide resources to help.
For technical issues related to ISIR processing:
- For support with your SAIG agreement and mailbox, or for help with technical issues related to ISIR processing, the FAFSA Partner Portal (FPP), or EDExpress, contact the FPS Help Desk (formerly CPS/SAIG Technical Support) at 1-800-330-5947 or by email at support@fps.ed.gov.
- For issue alerts, visit this 2024-25 FAFSA Issue Alerts page.
- For general questions related to the 2024-25 FAFSA, we welcome our partners to continue using the Contact Customer Support form in FSA’s Partner Connect Help Center. To submit a question, please enter your name, email address, topic, and question. When submitting a question, please select the topic “2024–25 FAFSA.”
To request assistance with financial aid management systems configuration or processing applications:
- For schools that need direct technical assistance related to processing applications and packaging aid award offers, please continue submitting your requests to the College Support Concierge mailbox CollegeSupportStrategy-FAFSA@ed.gov.