Lesson 1.6 · 3 minVerification and fixing mistakesVerification and fixing mistakes
This lesson helps you finish the FAFSA cleanly by answering a verification request, correcting a mistake and reporting a change the form cannot capture. Each step is routine, and handling it promptly keeps your aid on schedule.
If your form is selected for verification
Verification is a review in which a school confirms some of the information on your FAFSA. The Department of Education selects a share of forms each award year, and schools can choose to check others. Selection is a routine part of the process and says nothing about whether you did anything wrong.
Your school sends a list of what it needs, often through its student portal. The list might include a signed worksheet, proof of identity, records of household size, child support paid or benefits received, or tax records that did not come across from the IRS. Send exactly what is asked for, in the format requested, by the school's deadline.
A school usually holds federal aid until verification is complete, so a slow reply can delay a payment you were counting on. If a document is hard to get, tell the aid office early and ask what it will accept in its place.
Correcting your own answers
If you spot a mistake on your summary, log in to studentaid.gov, open your FAFSA and choose the option to make a correction. Change only what is wrong, then sign again, and any contributor who corrects their own part signs again too. The corrected form is reprocessed, and a new summary follows.
Some items cannot be edited this way, including the tax information transferred from the IRS. If one of those lines looks wrong, contact the aid office, which can review it and update your record from its side. The correction screen is also where you add a college that was missing from your original list.
Changes the form cannot capture
The FAFSA describes a past tax year, so a correction is only for an answer that was wrong when you gave it. A change since then, such as a parent losing a job, a divorce, a death in the family or heavy medical bills, calls for a different request. Each school's financial aid administrator can use professional judgment to adjust the information used for your aid.
Ask the aid office how to request that review. Most schools have their own form and want documents that show the change, and each school decides separately, so contact every college you are still weighing.
What to do next
Check your studentaid.gov dashboard and each college's portal once a week until your aid offers arrive. Reply to every request promptly, keep copies of what you send, and write down the name of anyone you speak with at an aid office.
When the offers come, the next course in this series walks you through reading them line by line and comparing one college with another. Until then, your FAFSA work for this award year is done.
Try this week
- Log in to each college's student portal
- Upload every document on a verification list
- Correct any wrong answer on studentaid.gov
- Ask the aid office how to report a drop in your family's income
Takeaway. Answer verification requests quickly, fix genuine mistakes on studentaid.gov, and take later changes in your circumstances to the aid office.