This Electronic Announcement provides updates related to the 2024–25 and 2025–26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form, including guidance for institutions with students who have a pseudo-Social Security number (SSN), updates about new FAFSA Submission Summary request functionality in FAFSA Partner Portal (FPP) for paper filers, and the Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR) request functionality.
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.
FAFSA Submission Summary Reprint Functionality for Paper Filers
On March 30, the Department implemented new functionality in the FPP to enable the reprinting of a FAFSA Submission Summary for applicants who applied using the paper FAFSA form. This functionality is available for both the 2024–25 and 2025–26 award cycle. Financial Aid Administrators (FAAs) may request the reprint of a FAFSA Submission Summary on behalf of the student, with the option to indicate it be mailed to either the student’s address on file (as entered on the FAFSA form) or to a new mailing address.
FAAs should coordinate with the student to determine where the student would like the reprint sent. The Department expects that this feature may be especially necessary for incarcerated students. In these cases, FAAs should work with both the student and the student’s correctional facility to determine the best address to send the FAFSA Submission Summary reprint. If the student elects to have the reprint sent to an address other than what is on the FAFSA form (e.g., the school’s mailing address), the address provided for the reprint will not overwrite the address on the FAFSA record.
FAAs can access this new feature in FPP by searching for a specific student, selecting the applicable transaction, and clicking the “FAFSA Submission Summary Reprint” button that displays underneath the Transaction Details section.
ISIR Request Functionality for Institutions and States
On March 30, the Department restored the ability for institutions and states to request a single ISIR or a specified group of ISIRs from the FAFSA Processing System. The feature can be accessed on the FAFSA Partner Portal, starting with the 2024–25 cycle. These requests may be submitted by the Destination Point Administrator enrolled for FAFSA batch services for your organization, or by FAFSA Online Services users enrolled for ISIR requests. To avoid delays in processing, the Department asks state agencies and institutions to limit ISIR requests to a one-month time range at this time.
Additional Information on requesting ISIRs through the ISIR Datamart can be found in Volume 3 of the FAFSA Specifications Guide.