The Department of Education has released an updated timeline for launching batch institutional corrections for the 2024-25 and 2025 -26 FAFSA applications through the Electronic Data Exchange (EDE). The outline below provides an overview of FSA’s testing process for both academic years, key reminders to ensure that the process is executed with minimum issues, and what institutions can expect moving forward. Below are the most important details from the announcement.
Most Recent Developments
- Federal Student Aid will submit batch corrections for testing with institutions and their vendors who participated in the fall beta tests
- The test period is expected to last two to three weeks
- The general release is expected to be before the end of February
Next Steps
- To avoid processing conflicts, the Department will clear the queue of all batch corrections files for 2024–25 and 2025–26 that were transmitted, but not processed, prior to the general release date
- Institutions that had submitted any 2024–25 or 2025–26 batch records prior to the general release will need to resubmit any records that still need to be processed
- This does not include institutions participating in the beta period, whose records will be processed, reviewed, and verified with the institutions and vendors during the beta period
Important Reminders for Corrections
- Please make sure that any records sent for corrections after the general release date are not outdated
- For example, if you submitted a 2024–25 batch correction to be processed and then made the same correction on a student’s record in the FAFSA Partner Portal, you should delete that record from any future batch correction sends
- This will avoid adding an incorrect or unwanted transaction to the student’s record or creating a new transaction that overwrites previously corrected information
- If corrections are made to a field that results in additional required information, please supply that information along with the initial field. For example, if a record’s High School Completion Status is being corrected from blank to “HS Diploma,” please provide all remaining information about the high school (High School Name, High School City, and High School State)
- If the remaining information is not provided, the correction will be rejected
- Please consult the “Data Edits” portion of Volume 5 of the FAFSA Specifications Guide
- If adjustments are made to a field that changes or overrides Federal Tax Information that has been pulled directly from the IRS (i.e., not manually entered financial information), the file must contain the professional judgment flag
SOURCE: (APP-25-01) Update on timeline for batch corrections processing for 2024–25 and 2025–26 FAFSA forms