On Aug. 29, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) unintentionally introduced two errors into the FAFSA Processing System that resulted in incorrect Pell Grant eligibility data being shared with institutions and applicants. Both issues have been resolved; impacted records have been reprocessed, and affected students will be notified soon.
The first error set the Pell Grant eligibility flag to “null” on a subset of 2025–26 Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs). This incorrect Pell Grant eligibility flag resulted in approximately 10,000 students who qualified for the minimum Pell Grant to be flagged as ineligible for a Pell Grant, even though the minimum Pell Grant indicator was set correctly. ED corrected this bug in a release on the morning of Sept. 9, 2025, and the impacted records were reprocessed with a reprocessing code of “01” the same afternoon.
The second error prevented the Pell Grant eligibility estimate value from being calculated for students before their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form was processed. While the bug was live, Pell-eligible applicants were initially notified that they were not likely eligible for a Pell Grant on the FAFSA post-submission screen and in a post-submission email. Once the application was processed, however, students received the correct determination on their FAFSA Submission Summary. This bug was fixed on Sept. 11, 2025. Students who received the incorrect initial notifications will receive a correction email during the week of Sept. 29, 2025. ISIRs were not impacted.
We apologize for these errors, and we greatly appreciate the collaboration and support of the schools and community partners that helped us identify and work through these issues. We are conducting a thorough review of the incidents and continue to prioritize improving our processes to avoid errors like this in the future.