Federal loans offer deferments and the type of loan may dictate the type of deferment. I'm assuming you have Stafford loans so I'll start there but you need to understand what deferment actually means for a Stafford loan. Your Stafford always has 3 statuses: deferred, in grace or repayment.
Deferment has less to do with you not having a job and not making payments and more to do with who pays what when. A Sub Stafford means that during deferment, I (the taxpayer) pay the interest accrueing during that certain defined time period and pick up more of the interest due the lender. Because there is a cost to the taxpayer, there is oversight in how the money is spent and all reason are voted on by Congress and signed into law. There are about 14 reasons this may happen and all of them are basically verified or certified by a 3rd party outside the system and you will NEVER get a deferment over the phone-- lenders need a paper in their files to prove in an audit that they were allowed to charge the taxpayers and give you, the individual, the funds. If you are beginning to look at this from a fraud, waste and abuse angle this may be making more sense. For example: in an in school deferment, the school signs the form. Deferments may change over time depending on what the country needs. Best example would be the military deferment to help the guys called out of school to go to Iraq. It makes perfect sense that the taxpayers pay their interest etc while they are fighting a war to defend the country. Deferments come and go and the one that comes up the most is "residency." Residents used to be able to defer a long time ago but that changed as the Feds started funding more and more of the cost through GME at the hospitals. I would hope you may be eligible for an economic hardship for now since you most likely don't have a job. If you have a Perkins loan, it may be applied to that if your Stafford is in an economic hardship.
Next status would be "grace:" your grace period on a Stafford began the day after you ceased attending school. It's basically a 6 month window before the loan legally enters repayment. It's purpose was to keep your loan from entering repayment between academic years since over the summer you weren't going to class. The loan was never allowed to enter repayment because you were not below 1/2 time status for greater that 6 months. Your 6 month grace was always a 6 month all or nothing deal-- meaning you may have been out for 2 months of the summer but you reenrolled before the 6 months was up so it was if you hadn't used any of it. During your grace period, I also pay the interest on your Sub loan and the intent is that you go to school, finish your degree and have 6 months to get a job and take over the payments of principle and interest. Your grace period is loan specific not you specific and once it is used on a Stafford, you don't get it back. Any deferment besides the In School basically mandates that you use your entire 6 month grace and then you can defer it. It is unlikely you have a grace on any Federal Consolidation loan you did in the past. A lot of consolidators called it a "grace" but that to me was very misleading... A grace in federal loan terms means the taxpayers pay the interest. In a consolidation the bank is picking it up-- two different things entirely in my book.
Again, think of the who pays when and the logic behind it all.
Repayment refers to again, who pays what when. In repayment, you are responsible for all of the interest both sub and unsub. The day the loan legally enters repayment a few things happen: any interest on your Unsub gets capitalized. Repayment is the status of the loan and not necessarilly indicative of you writing a check. A forbearance is a temporary cessation of payments granted to a borrower but the loan is always in repayment status meaning I'm not paying the sub interest anymore. A forbearance does not require a 3rd party verification and could be requested by a phone call. As there is no cost to the taxpayers, there is no real formal audit trail to have in place. So, during forbearance even though the loan is legally in repayment your lender is NOT reporting the payments past due. Any interest you haven't paid, gets capitalized at the end of a forbearance. In short: it costs you and not me for not writing the check.
Stafford loans and alternative loans are two completely different animals... As Staffords are federally backed or funded, the rules are consistent. Alternative loans don't all work the same way so it would be in your best interest to either call the lender or read the prom note. A lot of alternative loans directed at med/dent come with more than the 6 month grace. I've seen some nine month, 12 month, 2 years... Most likely you will never receive an economic hardship for an alternative loan but you may be eligible for them to place a forbearance on the account.
If you have other types of loans, let me know. I'm assuming you'll be out for a year so I would be mindful of what you are responsible for doing during that time to make sure your credit is being messed up along the way (another mess you never want to deal with). There is a limit to the amount of time you can defer for some reasons: eco hardship is 3 max I believe so if you're out for a year and have 4 in res to go, I'd be working on the 5 year plan so there are no surprises along the way.
One other option would be to enroll in school again for the year but you have to be working on a degree or certificate (MPH) maybe. Just a thought. Always bear in mind that the fed loans will always be easier to manage etc... there comes a point in time an alternative lender simply wants to be paid since they can't just get their money back from the gov't like they can with your Stafford.
Let me know if you have questions or if I lost you somewhere in all of this.
