By MorraLee Keller, Senior Director, Strategic Programming
Reading time: Four minutes
The Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) released an announcement yesterday detailing more information about the process for delivering Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) with Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) applicant data to states and institutions
and FAFSA Submission Summaries to students. Critical to this announcement is that FSA remains committed to beginning processing during the first half of March.
Of interest to National College Attainment Network Members, the announcement included news that students with contributors without a Social Security number (SSN) will be able to submit their FAFSA application during the first half of March. Additionally,
students who need to make corrections to their form will be able to do so later in March.
The ability of students to make corrections means that those who previously used the workaround to get a date-stamp
on their form that included a contributor without an SSN will be able to complete the form online. Furthermore, students who mistakenly submitted a form without a signature will also be able to sign and submit their
form for processing.
Turning back to ISIR processing, the precursor to aid offers, it is important to understand that FSA will need to take down studentaid.gov for hours-long periods to implement the coming changes and fixes to the system. FSA will provide as much advance
notice as possible of these outages. There may be intermittent outages along the way for testing and updates.
The initial batches of ISIRs will be small and increase in size as the system completes testing. It could take weeks for the US Department of Education (ED) to send all the submitted FAFSAs awaiting processing. Aid offers are likely still weeks away,
but the process is in place and clearer.
Now, more than ever, students need your support. The Class of 2024 is significantly behind the Class of 2023 in FAFSA completion. There are a lot of forms that need to be completed in a limited time to keep our students on a postsecondary track. Check
your high school submission rates on NCAN’s FAFSA Tracker.
To close the gap, NCAN recommends hosting large FAFSA completion events this spring. It may be time to recycle FSA ID creation and FAFSA workshops at a time when most practitioners would be focused on other things. It is also a good time to reconnect
with students who filed their form to assist them with corrections, adding colleges, or supplying the appropriate signatures/consent.
Finally, students are going to need support after the school year is over. Plan now for how your organization can provide support throughout the summer. Think back to 2020 and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic; what did you do that year to support your
students? NCAN applauds your heroic efforts so far this year to help students through the college application and financial aid process. NCAN will continue to update our Better FAFSA page to support your work.
NCAN encourages you to read the full announcement but highlights these next steps:
For Institutions and State Agencies
ISIRs will begin to be delivered in the first half of March with a very limited number (one or two) to a handful of schools for testing.
Once the testing has concluded, the delivery of ISIRs will aggressively ramp up per day and it is projected to take a couple of weeks to get all backlogged FAFSAs processed and out the door.
If Congressional appropriations allow for any increase to the Pell Grant, ISIRs will be reprocessed to reflect any changes.
As new FAFSAs are submitted during this ramp up time, those forms will be moved to the end of the queue for processing.
Once all backlogged forms are processed, the turnaround time should return to a normal range of three-to-five days.
ED will continue to provide a variety of previously announced supports to institutions and vendors.
Institutions will need to test their systems and model projections as the ISIRs flow into their database before aid packages can be delivered.
For Students and Contributors
IMPORTANT: Students who have contributors without an SSN should be able to submit a complete FAFSA in the first half of March. The system is slated to be ready to fully accept all contributors’ (with a verified FSA ID) information
online for processing. NCAN encourages those who do not have a pressing financial aid priority deadline to wait for the newly functioning system to submit their form.
FSA will send an email to all students with a submitted form indicating that their form has been processed and that the information has been sent to their institutions and state agency.
Students will be able to print and review their FAFSA Submission Summary to help understand if any additional actions are necessary.
Students with specific questions for their institutions could ask questions once they receive the FAFSA Submission Summary, as colleges should have received their ISIR.
PLEASE NOTE: Students will not be able to make corrections, add colleges, or provide signatures until later in March.
The timing of ISIRs and FAFSA Submission Summaries means that students are still not likely to receive an aid offer until mid-to-late April.
Students attending colleges with a commitment date need to verify if that date has been extended. Student can check the NACAC Enrollment Directory to monitor
dates.
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