Some FAFSA filers may have received an incorrect determination of their financial aid eligibility due to an error in calculating assets.
The Department of Education recently resolved an issue which impacted some 2025-26 and 2026-27 FAFSA filers and how assets were used in calculating their Student Aid Index (SAI).
In a November 20, 2025 Electronic Announcement, Federal Student Aid (FSA) outlined the issue and the resolution that was implemented. According to FSA, the issue impacted a subset of FAFSA applications with multiple contributors and which met the following criteria:
- At least one user manually entered income and another imported income data from the Internal Revenue Service, and
- The combined adjusted gross income (AGI) placed the application near or across the asset inclusion threshold.
Some of the forms meeting these criteria didn’t include the provided asset values in the SAI calculation, which led to a potentially incorrect SAI determination, and in some situations, an incorrect Pell Grant determination.
It was estimated that approximately 20,000 2025-26 applicants and 2,700 2026-27 applicants were impacted.
FSA implemented a fix to this issue on November 9. Applications submitted on or after November 9 have accurate asset information. The Electronic Announcement outlines how the Department of Education plans to address and resolve errors calculated prior to the fix for 2025-26 and 2026-27 FAFSA forms.
Questions need to be directed to the FPS Help Desk at 1-800-330-5947 or by email at support@fps.ed.gov.
