Over the past four weeks, the Department completed the reprocessing of 2024–25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) records impacted by several issues. Records were reprocessed for three broad reasons, with each assigned a separate Reprocessing Reason Code.
Reprocessing Reason Code “12”
These records were impacted when assets for the student (or their contributors) are collected by the FAFSA form and subsequently used in the Student Aid Index (SAI) calculation even when they meet criteria under the law for an exemption from reporting assets. The underlying issue that caused this error has been resolved and no further inaccurate records are anticipated. The Department communicated about the intention to reprocess these records in a September 27 electronic announcement (GEN-24-116), and reprocessing was completed on November 22. Overall, 21,660 records were reprocessed, with approximately one-third resulting in a decreased SAI and the remainder seeing no SAI change. 21 records have no SAI after re-processing. These records will require a correction to provide the missing data required to calculate an SAI.
Reprocessing Reason Code “13”
These are paper FAFSA applications which were in a rejected status because of a data inconsistency in a backend system. The Department previously acknowledged this issue in a November 27 electronic announcement (GEN-24-139). The underlying issue that caused this error was resolved on November 29 and no additional reprocessing is required. 2,413 records were reprocessed, with 1,011 now successfully complete and 1,402 rejected and still requiring action. The rejection reasons for the latter group are now set appropriately on the FAFSA Submission Summary and ISIR and should be dealt with in line with instructions for resolving rejects based upon the listed comment code.
Reprocessing Reason Code “14”
These records had conflicting information when FTI and manually reported non-filer status exist on the same ISIR. The Department previously acknowledged this issue and provided guidance for schools to manually resolve the conflicting information in a June 17 electronic announcement (GEN-24-71). The Department communicated about the intention to reprocess these records in a September 27 electronic announcement (GEN-24-116), and reprocessing was completed on December 13. 183,087 records were reprocessed, with 5,927 now successfully complete and 177,157 rejected and still requiring action. The rejection reasons for the latter group are now set appropriately on the FAFSA Submission Summary and ISIR and should be dealt with in line with instructions for resolving rejects based upon the listed comment code. While reprocessed records with code “14” will now correctly rely upon FTI to calculate eligibility, records may still be rejected and require corrections to calculate the Student Aid Index (SAI) if the applicant and their contributors did not answer certain financial questions (i.e., foreign income excluded from taxation, pension rollovers, IRA rollovers, and Earned Income Tax Credit) because they initially indicated they were a non-tax filer. If a correction is required to resolve the reject and calculate the Student Aid Index (SAI), students and their contributors may make the correction themselves at StudentAid.gov and follow the prompts to answer the missing questions. Schools still have the option to make corrections in FAFSA Partner Portal to provide answers to the missing questions based on documentation collected for the applicant and their contributors, as outlined in GEN-24-71. Schools are also reminded that if they followed the guidance in GEN-24-71 and resolved the conflicting information prior to the reprocessing, after following the requirements outlined in Chapter 5 of the Application and Verification Guide in the 2024-25 FSA Handbook, to review all incoming ISIRs, the school may continue to disburse on the previously resolved ISIR transaction. If the record was updated to note that the student was a tax filer, the record was not reprocessed.
Ongoing Conflicting Information
The underlying issue allowing for FTI and manually reported non-filer status to exist on the same ISIR has been improved as part of a release in November, but still remains for a small number of students. Fully resolving this issue is a priority for the Department and a fix is in development with a planned deployment in the first quarter of 2025. We will need to complete another round of reprocessing of impacted records once the fix is deployed. Until that time, schools can follow the guidance in GEN-24-71 to resolve conflicting information by making a correction in the FAFSA Partner Portal. Students can also make corrections directly.