"FAFSA Data Delays Cause Chaos in College Admissions"

The Department of Education and the IRS have identified three issues affecting a subset of FAFSA forms, impacting approximately 5% of previously submitted applications, which need to be reprocessed due to errors potentially decreasing financial aid eligibility. The issues involve inconsistent tax data transferred via the FA-DDX and manually entered information. The Department plans to reprocess affected records as soon as functionality is available, with over 80% of FAFSAs unaffected. Schools are provided guidance on identifying forms with errors, options for moving forward, and the Department's intention to reprocess certain records. Additionally, the Department will release a list of unaffected records and provide daily updates to keep stakeholders informed.