LOA and loan repayment

[dancerchick]

This is a question for people who took a Leave of Absence from Med school, or anyone else who knows someone who has. Is it possible to freeze your loans and not start accruing interest/have to pay it back right away. I know if the LOA is to go get a masters or whatever then you dont have to start paying back your loan. But what about people who took a year off to do volunteer work overseas or do research, etc and are not making very much money...is it possible to freeze your loans without taking a LOA to do more schooling?

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[yadayadadude]

I'm on (maternity) leave right now.

It's not possible to "freeze" your loans. If you're in school, you get in-school deferment, during which time the feds pay the interest on your subsidized loans. Interest on the unsubs continues to accrue. Once you're not enrolled in school, you have the same options as everyone else who's not in school: use up your grace period then begin repayment or apply for economic hardship deferment or forbearance. Remember that you forfeited your grace period for any consolidated loans. If all your loans are unconsolidated, you have six months before you own payments on the Stafford loans (and nine months for Perkins -- not sure about GradPlus, as I don't have any of those). As an example, my Perkins and unconsolidated subsidized Staffords are still within the grace period during my three month leave. I'm making payments on my consolidated Staffords.

 

[njbmd]

Moving to Financial Aid as this is a financial topic.