Studen Loan Consolidation
Should you consolidate your student loans?
A student loan consolidation is a loan you can borrow to combine your existing eligible student loans into a single loan. When you apply for a student loan consolidation, you are taking out a new loan to pay off all or a portion of your original loans. You would want your new loan to have a fixed interest rate and a repayment term of up to 30 years — depending on the total student loan consolidation amount.
You cannot consolidate any non-federal student loans obtained through a bank, credit union, or other type of financial institution, loans from the institution or school you attended, loans made to you by a friend of family member, credit card or consumer debt, or automotive loans from your bank, credit union, or other type of financial institution. Also, Federal Primary Care Loans (PCL) have a service obligation and cannot be included in a Federal Student Consolidation Loan.
There are a number of reasons why you may choose to consolidate your eligible student loans, including lower monthly payments, single-statement billing, new or renewed deferments and fixed interest rates.
Everyone has his or her own reasons for consolidating student loans. The reasons listed above are just a few reasons why you may consider federal student loan consolidation. Even if you didn't borrow your student loans through an Access Group, you may be able to consolidate student loans with someone and take advantage of low interest rates with no minimum loan balance required. You can also choose to consolidate your undergraduate loans while you are in graduate school; you can even choose student loan consolidate for only a portion of your eligible loans.
With recent changes to the Federal Loan programs, consolidation may or may not be beneficial for you. Visit the links on this page to learn more.
Did you already consolidate student loans and need to do it again? Another student loan consolidation can be done only if you have at least one eligible student loan that was not included in your earlier student consolidation loan. In other words, you need to have at least one eligible loan that you did not to consolidate in the prior Consolidation Loan, or at least one new eligible student loan that you borrowed after the earlier consolidation. In these cases, the prior student consolidation loan can be included as one of the loans you are consolidating in the new student loan consolidation.