Your husband's job loss is absolutely grounds for a professional judgment review! Make sure to contact each school's financial aid office ASAP with documentation of the change in circumstances. This could significantly improve your aid packages. For anyone in this situation, here's what you'll typically need to provide: 1. Letter explaining the change in circumstances 2. Documentation (termination letter, final pay stub, unemployment benefits statement) 3. Estimate of current year income 4. The school's specific professional judgment form (each has their own) Don't wait until you receive the initial award letters - you can start this process now. And definitely follow up by phone if you don't hear back within a week or two of submitting the documentation.

As someone who went through this process with my twin daughters last year, I can tell you that the waiting is definitely the hardest part! Here are a few additional tips that helped us stay organized: 1. Create a simple tracking spreadsheet with columns for each school, application deadline, FAFSA submission date, award letter received date, and decision deadline. This helped us see at a glance which schools we were still waiting on. 2. Set up a dedicated email folder for college financial aid correspondence - things can get overwhelming when you're managing multiple schools. 3. Don't panic if you don't hear anything by early April. We got one daughter's award letter literally 5 days before the May 1st deadline, and it ended up being her best offer! 4. Consider reaching out to current students or parents in your area who attend the schools your daughter is considering. They can give you real-world insight into actual costs beyond what the award letters show. The job loss situation you mentioned could actually work in your favor for aid appeals. Schools are generally very understanding about unexpected financial changes, especially recent job loss. Good luck to your daughter - sounds like she's got some great options ahead of her!

So glad to hear it worked out! This is such a common issue this year - the new FAFSA system seems to have a lot of technical glitches that trap applications after processing. For anyone else reading this thread with similar problems, it sounds like contacting FSA directly (whether through their regular line or services like Claimyr) is really the only way to get these technical issues resolved on the backend. Don't waste time trying to troubleshoot it yourself if the basic steps like clearing cache don't work - there are actual system bugs that only they can fix.

As a newcomer here, I just want to say how helpful this thread has been! I'm actually dealing with a similar situation right now with my daughter's FAFSA - it's been showing "Processed" for over a week but we can't add her remaining schools. Reading through everyone's experiences here has been really reassuring that we're not alone in this. I'm going to try the Make FAFSA Corrections section that Max mentioned first, and if that doesn't work, I'll look into using Claimyr like Adrian suggested. It's so frustrating that these technical issues are so common with the new system, but at least there seem to be solutions! Thanks to everyone who shared their experiences - it really helps to know what actually works when you're panicking about deadlines.

Thank you everyone for the helpful responses! I feel much more confident about writing our appeal now. I'm going to focus on: 1. The specific reduced hours my spouse is facing at work with pay stubs to show the difference 2. Our medical expenses from the past year with documentation 3. A breakdown of our monthly budget showing the gap between what we can save and what the EFC/SAI expects I appreciate all your advice and experiences. I'll update once we hear back about our appeal!

Just wanted to add one more thing that helped us - if your school has a financial aid counselor or advisor, try to schedule a meeting with them before submitting your appeal. We did this and they actually helped us identify additional circumstances we hadn't considered (like the fact that we support my elderly parent financially even though they don't live with us). The counselor also gave us specific language to use in our appeal letter and told us exactly what documentation they needed. It made the whole process much smoother and I think having their input beforehand really strengthened our case. Most schools offer these consultations for free, so it's worth asking!

One thing I forgot to mention in my original response - timing matters! The financial aid cycle has a rhythm to it. Early in the cycle (January-March), schools often have more institutional aid available. By April-May, many schools have allocated most of their funds. However! If you're willing to be strategic, some additional aid becomes available in late summer (July-August) when students who committed end up not attending. This creates a last-minute pool of funds that schools can reallocate. In your professional judgment appeal letter, emphasize that having both children attend simultaneously creates a temporary but extreme financial burden that isn't adequately captured by the SAI calculation. Provide a month-by-month cash flow analysis if possible, showing how the expected payments would exceed your disposable income.

I went through a similar situation with my daughter at a private university last year. Here's what I learned: definitely pursue the professional judgment review, but also ask specifically about "enrollment management" funds. These are discretionary funds that admissions offices sometimes use to secure students they really want. Since you have twins both accepted to the same school, you actually have some leverage - they want both students to enroll! When I met with the financial aid director, I brought a simple one-page comparison showing what our family could realistically contribute versus what the SAI expected. I also mentioned that we were considering other schools (even if you're not, it shows you have options). The key phrase I used was "demonstrated financial need beyond what the federal formula captures." Don't apologize for your situation - frame it as the school helping you make their institution financially viable for your family. We ended up getting an additional $6,000 per year through a combination of institutional grants and work-study increases. Also, check if they have emergency or hardship funds available. Some schools have separate pools of money for exactly these situations that aren't widely advertised.

For what it's worth, I went through something similar and the impact on aid wasn't as bad as I feared. The SAI calculation for parent assets only counts around 5.64% of assets above the Asset Protection Allowance, so even if it does need to be reported, it might only change your SAI by a relatively small amount. A $27,000 asset might only increase your SAI by about $1,500 (very rough estimate). But definitely clarify the ownership situation first!

As someone who just went through this process with my twins, I wanted to add that timing matters here too. If the grandparents are planning to make distributions for fall semester, you might want to coordinate with them about WHEN they make those payments. Even though grandparent 529 distributions don't count as student income anymore under the new FAFSA rules, some schools still track them internally for their own aid calculations. My suggestion would be to have them pay directly to the school rather than to you or your daughter, and keep all the documentation. Also, if they have $27k saved, they might be able to spread payments across multiple years to help with cash flow and avoid any potential issues with individual school policies. Just make sure to get clarity on the account ownership first - that's really the key piece that determines everything else!