As a follow-up to its March 4th announcement, the Department has provided a number of updates regarding ISIR transmissions, FAFSA Submission Summaries, and how institutions can access information through the Partner Portal.
Here are the main takeaways:
- A small subset of previously designated schools and state agencies received ISIR transmission over the weekend.
- These institutions will gradually receive more submitted ISIRs until the backlog is completed in two weeks.
- Several front-end applications issues related to SSNs, Birthdates, and Alien Registration Numbers are now resolved.
- FAFSA Submission Summaries will be available to students once their FAFSA is processed and they will a corresponding email notification.
- The FAFSA Partner Portal is now live and schools can immediately use the applicant view functionality.
For more details, read the complete announcement below:
POSTED DATE: March 12, 2024
AUTHOR: Federal Student Aid
ELECTRONIC ANNOUNCEMENT ID: GENERAL-24-20
SUBJECT: Additional Details of 2024-25 ISIR Delivery, Updates for Non-SSN Contributors, and Launch of the FAFSA Partner Portal
In the Mar. 4, 2024 Electronic Announcement (EA ID: GENERAL-24-17), the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) released details of FAFSA® Initial Institutional Student Information Records (ISIR) Delivery for the 2024-25 award year. In that announcement, we outlined that the transmission of ISIRs to institutions, state aid agencies, and designated scholarship organizations would begin in small batches to a limited subset of schools and states and increase in volume over a series of weeks. That transmission began over the weekend, and we are gradually ramping up delivery.
As noted in the March 4th announcement, once we have started delivering ISIRs at full scale, we anticipate that it will take about two additional weeks to process all applications that have already been submitted.
Resolution of Issues
Several issues with the front-end application, as previously published to the Issues Alert section of the 2024-25 FAFSA Updates page, are now resolved. Notably, we implemented a technical fix to provide for contributors with no SSN to access a student’s online FAFSA form as noted in EA ID: GENERAL-24-19. We also resolved four additional issues that previously had no workaround and prevented submission of the FAFSA form. Notably:
- Students Unable to Save or Submit A FAFSA Form When Entering an Alien Registration Number That Ends in Zero
- Some Students with A Date of Birth of 2000 Are Looped to Unusual Circumstances Page
- Users With No-SSN Are Unable to Enter A FAFSA When Upgrading Their Limited Account to a Full FSA ID Account
- Customers who Change Their Citizenship Status from Eligible Non-Citizen Are Unable to Submit an Application
New Functionality
The Department is pleased to announce additional new FAFSA functionality:
- FAFSA Submission Summary. Once a student’s FAFSA is processed, the FAFSA Submission Summary will now be available to the student when they log into their StudentAid.gov account. At that time, students can review the answers they provided on their submitted FAFSA. Although the FAFSA Submission Summary can be viewed once the FAFSA is processed, in the following weeks, students being processed as part of the backlog will receive an email updating them that their FAFSA Submission Summary can be viewed. We will also be working to make ongoing improvements to address a few known issues with the FAFSA Submission Summary:
- Applicants who are not eligible to receive a Pell Grant do not see messaging on their FAFSA Submission Summary that they are not eligible. They do see the correct messaging that they are not eligible on their confirmation page. There is currently no timeline for resolution.
- Pell Grant eligibility is not displaying for provisionally independent students on their FAFSA Submission Summary. There is currently no timeline for resolution.
- Partner Portal. The FAFSA Partner Portal is now live and may be accessed at https://fafsa.partnerportal.ed.gov/. Schools may immediately use the Applicant View functionality, which displays the data from processed records. Additional functionality will be announced on the Knowledge Center as it becomes available.
- As previously announced, the FAFSA Partner Portal replaces FAA Access to CPS Online beginning with the 2024–25 application cycle. The two systems will operate concurrently during the overlap of the two cycle years. The new site maintains the functionality of FAA Access with a few notable changes, including the overall look and feel of the site.
- After signing in to FAFSA Partner Portal, FAAs will see the Dashboard page, which is the starting point for all actions available to users. The Dashboard presents a more student-centric interface compared to FAA Access’s function-driven one. In FAA Access, FAAs start by choosing a function (such as Student Inquiry or Correction Entry). In FAFSA Partner Portal, FAAs will begin by providing the student information for the individual they are working with. Once a student is selected, the site will display all of the available functions that can be performed for that individual.
- In addition to these overall functional changes, FAAs should note that the federal tax information provided by the IRS will not display anywhere in FAFSA Partner Portal, nor will FAAs be able to input an initial FAFSA into the system instead of an applicant submitting a FAFSA online, or submitting a paper FAFSA to the Department.
- For a complete summary of the changes to the FAFSA Partner Portal, please reference the 2024-25 FAFSA Specifications Guide, Volume 1: Summary of Changes.
New Issue Alerts
In the early stages of ISIR generation, some new issues were discovered which impact the user experience and overall application process for students and families:
- Student Aid Index (SAI) calculation omitting reported assets for families whose combined AGI exceeds the threshold that requires them to report assets on the FAFSA form, but as individual tax filers their AGIs are below the threshold. For independent students, this includes scenarios where both the student and their spouse are required contributors who must provide information on the form, and their assets are greater than $0. For dependent students, this includes scenarios where both parents (i.e., parent and parent spouse) are required contributors who must provide information on the form, and their assets are greater than $0.
- This has been corrected as applications are processed and the estimated SAI on the FAFSA Submission Summary will correctly consider any required reported assets, as well as the effects of the updating of the SAI tables for inflation announced in GENERAL-24-06. However, the Department is still working to adjust the initial estimated SAI that is provided to students upon completion of the form, prior to processing. There is no estimated timeline for completion. Students impacted by this issue will potentially see a discrepancy in their initial SAI upon completion of the FAFSA form versus what their SAI calculation reflects after their form is processed.
- There is a small batch of submitted FAFSAs that may result in a rejected ISIR at processing as the system fix identifies applicants (and their contributors) who should have been required to report assets but were not presented with the requirement to do so when completing their form. In these cases, the student, their contributor(s), or the school should submit a correction when corrections are available to report those assets.
- If a student has missing family size information, their SAI is not calculated. Currently, the FAFSA Submission Summary does not show why the SAI has not been calculated (i.e., due to missing family size information). A potential workaround is that a contributor returns to the form to provide the family size. There is currently no firm timeline for resolution.
- On certain internet browsers, the “My Activity” section of the StudentAid.gov dashboard does not load when a FAFSA application already exists for user. There is currently no firm timeline for resolution. Applicants should use one of the recommended internet browsers to complete their application: Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome.
- The student’s Federal Pell Grant history, that is pulled from the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) and appears on the ISIR after processing, does not reflect the last three Pell Grant award sequences. However, Pell Lifetime Eligibility Used (LEU) and Unusual Enrollment History (UEH) flags are still triggering correctly on the ISIR, and schools should continue to review and resolve these flags to ensure students are packaged correctly. Schools should continue to utilize NSLDS online in general, and NSLDS Transfer Student Monitoring (TSM) to obtain the most current financial aid history for a student when needed.