(GENERAL-25-25) Information on Expanded Late Disbursement Flexibilities for 2024-25 FAFSA Forms and Additional Information on Remaining Processing Errors

This Electronic Announcement describes several remaining issues related to submitted and processed records with a blank Student Aid Index (SAI) field for the 2024–25 FAFSA cycle. It also amends and extends the flexibilities provided in the December 12, 2024 Electronic Announcement (GENERAL-24-143) to assist schools in awarding and disbursing student aid. 

The U.S. Department of Education (the Department) is extending the flexibilities for late disbursements, as published in GENERAL-24-143, to all students who filed a FAFSA form for the 2024-25 award year—either online or via the paper (PDF) form—and are or were impacted by a known issue announced by the Department, that prevented their official SAI from being calculated by the FAFSA Processing System (FPS) prior to the end of their enrollment. These known issues are described in the Department’s Technical Frequently Asked Questions and Known Issues Guide, which will continue to be updated through the end of the 2024-25 FAFSA cycle. These flexibilities do not extend to issues that may have arisen at a school, such as a financial aid management systems issue or internal administrative delays in processing FAFSA forms timely. 

A school that receives an Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR) for a student who is no longer enrolled but whose Application Receipt Date (ISIR field #8) was prior to the end of the student’s enrollment and who would have otherwise been eligible to receive a Title IV disbursement may still award and disburse the funds if the reason for the delay is one of the known issues identified by the Department in the Technical Frequently Asked Questions and Known Issues Guide, subject to normal late disbursement requirements found in 34 C.F.R. § 668.164(j). For these students, a school may also utilize the flexibility to start the 180-day late disbursement clock from the later of: (1) the date the student withdrew or otherwise became ineligible for the award year, or (2) the earliest Transaction Processed Date with an official SAI. 

Additionally, for paper filers only, schools may use an alternative Application Receipt Date for late disbursement eligibility if the school obtains documentation (e.g., a delivery confirmation receipt from a mail service) to support the use of an earlier paper FAFSA form application date than the one processed in FPS and reflected on the ISIR. As provided in GENERAL-24-143, schools that choose to exercise these flexibilities for paper filers must still maintain appropriate documentation in the student’s file to confirm late disbursement eligibility. 

While the Department believes that the FPS is processing and applying reject codes correctly for the majority of 2024–25 records, we are aware of some remaining issues that result in rejected FAFSA records that prevent an official Student Aid Index (SAI) from being calculated for certain students for the 2024–25 application cycle.  

Broadly, these processed records are impacted by one of the following scenarios: 1) Reject codes that cannot be resolved due to a known issue with the Department’s systems; or 2) An ongoing FPS bug causing ISIRs with Blank SAIs and no reject code. In other instances, the reject codes are the result of the FPS functioning as expected, and schools can resolve the records using standard instructions provided in the FAFSA Specifications Guide. See the sections below for more detail. 

In some cases, the processed records display a reject code that cannot be resolved by the applicant (or their contributor, as applicable) or the school—despite attempts to make the correction—due to a known system issue. If both the applicant and the school are blocked from resolving the issue and subsequently obtaining an official SAI, they should document the issue in the student’s file and wait for resolution from the Department. The Department is working diligently to implement permanent fixes to these issues and will continue to post updates to the Knowledge Center and FAFSA Issue Alerts page as they are resolved. Once the Department has implemented a technical fix, the reject is resolved, and the school receives an ISIR with an official SAI, the Department encourages the school to utilize the additional flexibilities provided above to award financial aid and make late disbursements to students who would have otherwise been eligible to receive Title IV funds prior to the end of their enrollment. 

As of May 2025, the most common reasons that a FAFSA record may be rejected but could not be resolved include: 

As discussed in the February 27 Electronic Announcement (APP-25-09), the Department has been working to address a known issue impacting 2024–25 and 2025–26 applications that resulted in blank SAIs appearing on non-rejected ISIRs due to missing data from the Federal Tax Information Module (FTIM). The Department implemented a fix and reprocessed impacted records at the end of February; however, the issue remains as not all records were able to be reprocessed. We are continuing to research this issue and reprocess impacted records. We will also update the Technical FAQ and Known Issues Guide. Schools do not need to take any action to correct these records unless critical information is missing from the record (e.g., updated family size) after reprocessing. 

Processing reject codes, as outlined in Volume 5 – Edits and Rejects of the 2024–25 FAFSA Specifications Guide, are generally applied to FAFSA records when the data entered on the form is incomplete or inconsistent and must be resolved. When a reject code is applied to a record, a comment code is also assigned and appears on both the FAFSA Submission Summary and ISIR output documents. The comment code provides additional information for resolving the issue through either a contributor-initiated correction on StudentAid.gov or by a school-initiated correction via Electronic Data Exchange (EDE) or FAFSA Partner Portal. Once all conditions for the reject codes have been resolved and submitted, the record will be reprocessed and an official SAI will be calculated. Financial aid administrators at schools may also reference Volume 7 – Comment Codes of the 2024–25 FAFSA Specifications Guide for additional detail related to each comment code, and what action is needed, if applicable. We remind schools that when a student (or another contributor) must take the action to resolve the conflicting data (e.g., correcting the personal information attached to their StudentAid.gov account) this is called out in the “Action Needed” column of the Comment Codes guide. We also remind schools of the additional resources available on the FSA Training Center which provide training on the aid application process, making professional judgment and dependency status determinations, and specific FSA systems. 

As of late May 2025, the most common reasons that a FAFSA record may be rejected include:  

To better assist schools in making corrections that may resolve some of these reject codes, the Department hosted two live internet webinars, both titled, “Submitting Corrections in the FAFSA Partner Portal.” The material presented in each webinar was the same but concluded with live Q&A sessions. Schools can watch these webinars on-demand on the FSA Training Center by logging in and navigating to the “Recorded Webinars and Training” section. 

The Department continues to send emails directly to applicants and their contributors who are missing information on their FAFSA form and need to make a correction to resolve a rejected record. We also encourage schools and states to continue to contact us if they experience difficulties with resolving a rejected record.