On April 14, FSA released Electronic Announcement APP-25-11 which includes guidance for institutions with students who have a pseudo-Social Security number. The guidance reads:
Update on Student Records with a Pseudo-SSN
FAFSA applicants from the Freely Associated States (the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, or the Federated States of Micronesia) who do not have an SSN are assigned an identification number, also known as a “pseudo-SSN”, when they complete the FAFSA form for the first time. Returning applicants who have a pseudo-SSN from a previous year are encouraged to reuse their assigned pseudo-SSN when filing the FAFSA form in subsequent years. Returning applicants who complete the online FAFSA form do not need to enter their pseudo-SSN when they complete the form; it will automatically be associated with their FAFSA form when they log in with their StudentAid.gov account. Returning applicants who complete the paper FAFSA form are instructed to enter their previously assigned pseudo-SSN, which is a number beginning with “666”. In a very few cases, some returning applicants who were previously assigned a pseudo SSN were incorrectly assigned a new pseudo-SSN by the system. This created duplicate records and made it difficult for institutions to view a consolidated record of the federal student aid the student has received, such as tracking lifetime disbursement amounts under the Federal Pell Grant (or lifetime eligibility used [LEU]) and federal student loan programs (aggregate loan limits).
In November 2024, the Department implemented a workaround in the Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) system, which sweeps accounts twice per week to match new pseudo-SSN customer records with existing records. Any institutions that continue to see students with multiple pseudo-SSNs should contact the FSA Partner and School Relations Center to have the records manually linked.