I was having the same issue and couldn't get through to the financial aid office at all. After being on hold for hours multiple days, I finally used this service called Claimyr (claimyr.com) to get a callback from them. They have this video showing how it works: https://youtu.be/TbC8dZQWYNQ Turns out my school was missing my parents' tax verification form which is why my award letter hadn't been processed. They never even notified me! Got it resolved in 24 hours after finally talking to someone.

One more thing to consider - many schools prioritize processing in a specific order: 1. New incoming students (freshmen and transfers) 2. Continuing students with complete applications by priority deadlines 3. Late applications and incomplete files If you submitted after your school's priority deadline or if any information was flagged for verification, you might be further down in the processing queue. For your immediate payment deadline issue, ask about a financial aid deferment. Most schools will extend your payment deadline if they can see your FAFSA has been submitted and is in their system, even if they haven't finished processing your awards yet.

my daughter's financial aid advisor told us the whole system is still buggy. even if everything looks fine now, print out confirmation pages of EVERYTHING and keep checking the status every couple weeks. my niece thought her fafsa was all done but then 2 months later got an email saying there was a problem with the parent section that needed fixing.

To provide some additional clarity: Under the FAFSA Simplification Act, the 2025-2026 application simplifies the parent contribution process for married couples filing jointly. When spouses file taxes jointly, the primary financial information is collected from whichever parent was entered first in the application. The system generates an accurate Student Aid Index (SAI) calculation using the household's joint tax information without requiring both parents to individually submit information. Your daughter's application is processing correctly based on what you've described.

It should transmit to schools automatically based on the ones she listed on the FAFSA. We're still waiting for her financial aid packages though - that's another waiting game altogether!

Thanks! At this point I just want to get through the first waiting game before I start worrying about the second one 😅

dont 4get to check if her major has any special scholarships!! my roomate got 3500 just for being in the engineering department but she had to ASK nobody told her about it lol

One final note: if you do end up needing private loans, having a cosigner with excellent credit can significantly reduce the interest rate - sometimes by 2-3 percentage points. Also, look for lenders that offer cosigner release after a certain number of on-time payments (usually 24-48 months). This allows your daughter to take over the loan independently once she has established her own credit history, which removes your liability.

Thank you everyone for all this helpful info! I just created an account on studentaid.gov and started my FAFSA application. You were right that it's pretty straightforward once you're on the official site. I'm going to ask my financial aid office about workshops too. Really appreciate all the advice - this has been stressing me out for weeks!

Great job taking action! One last tip: create an FSA ID for both yourself and your parent (if you're a dependent student) before starting the actual FAFSA. It can take 1-3 days for the IDs to be fully activated, and you need them to sign electronically. Good luck!