The Department of Education continues to roll out the 2025-26 FAFSA processing.
The Department announced that as of November 24, they have started processing 2025-26 paper applications. Schools can make corrections to paper forms via the FAFSA Partner Portal and student corrections to paper forms will be available in early 2025.
Updates to 2024-25 Paper FAFSA Forms
The reject code 9 and comment code 023 that occurred when processing the 2024-25 paper FAFSAs and resulted in incorrectly rejected ISIRs has been resolved through the deployment of a fix by the Department on November 24. The Department started reprocessing impacted records and will send reprocessed ISIR to schools.
The Identity Validation Processing Error that occurred when the Department processed some 2024-25 paper FAFSAs has also been addressed. The Department has identified the impacted applicants and are returning the applicable portions of their applications to them with instructions for affirming or correcting the information.
As a reminder, the data on the paper FAFSA must exactly match the existing StudentAid.gov account, including spacing, punctuation, and abbreviations. Applicants and contributors are encouraged to review and, if needed, correct their name, address, and date of birth at StudentAid.gov.
Students can also submit a new application online if they don’t need to retain the original FAFSA submission date for eligibility purposes. Applicants that need to maintain their original submission date, have correct information on the FAFSA form that was returned to them, or do not have internet access can call 1-800-433-3243 and mention code “800-001” to resolve the issue.
Incarcerated applicants will receive a communication with an alternate resolution due to their limited ability to make phone calls or have internet access. Schools participating in the Second Chance Experiment or Prison Education Program will receive an email with information for helping their students resolve the issue.
Questions about the information in this announcement should be sent through the Contact Customer Support form link in the Federal Student Aid’s Help Center.
