<p>I can’t seem to find anything regarding one aspect of consolidation. When you consolidate another commercial lender steps in and pay off all of your federal loans ( including fixed Perkins, and variable Staffords I think ) and put itself as the new lender. Please correct me if I am wrong. </p>
<p>Now having said that, my question is: do the original in-school benefits like federal subsized interests ( no interests accum while in school ) carry over in the new “consolidated” loan ?</p>
<p>This canbe an issue if the new lender does not subsidize but capitalize (add int to principle ) while the student is in school. For example, if your student have the typical William Ford subsidized (which is Stafford by another name ? ) and a Perkin loan and your student plans to go to grad school, you are looking at 6-7 years in-school. The interests if not subsidized would be substantial when (capitalized) added to the principle. So it will offset any perceived benefits from the lower rate. </p>
<p>Would someone care to comment about this, I appreciate it very much.</p>
<p>My D is going through the process right now. The consolidated loans through her prospective new lender keep the repayment schedule from kicking in until she’s been out of school for six months.</p>
<p>She believes the interest is still subsidized but will check on Monday…as you point out, it wouldn’t make sense otherwise.</p>
<p>One rumor I had to run down was that you could only consolidate once. I had been concerned that if D consolidated now, she would be stuck with (at least) two more years of unconsolidated loans in the future. </p>
<p>It turns out that the genesis of the rumor is that you can have only one consolidation loan at any one time. But you can conolidate now and the consolidate again in the future if it’s advantageous. </p>
<p>Finding out the lender info about D’s current loans has been problematic…she has a piece of paper from the Federal Something or Another that shows loan balances and loan numbers but, since she’s not making payments, doesn’t identify a specific lender. I’m hoping she gets that puzzle piece sorted out tomorrow. She has her consolidation application on-line mostly done.</p>
<p>Students just need their SS#, DOB, and govt-issued PIN to access the data on all their govt-issued loans, including info on the providers/servicers for each loan.</p>
<p>I’ve been told the only way to “reconsolidate” a student loan is if you have borrowed new loans after the original consolidation. You cannot just reconsolidate an already consolidated loan.</p>
<p>JEM, I’ve stayed out of it for the most part but I looked at the screen where D had used her PIN to get to and it had the loan balance and loan number but not the name of a loan provider…did I miss something? </p>
<p>I’ll take a look again tomorrow when I’m not wiped out from a long day with a lot of driving.</p>
<p>If you are on the display that provides the “aid summary” and highlight the loan number (all the way on the left of each loan report) that info should come up.</p>
<p>My D had processed her Strafford loan consolidation online on her own and just mentioned it to me, but I could not help myself from doing a double-check of things myself. Hard to let go of those financial apron strings!</p>