Originally posted by missbonnie
I have subsidized
But yes, for those that have un-subsidized, you still have to make interest payments.
I just checked on that and while you CAN pay interest, you don't have to. It just accrues and then capitalizes just like in Undergrad.
Also, if you consolidate now, you can still defer for residency. There is something called "medical residency forbearance" which apparently most lenders aren't telling residents about. But before that, it is better to ask for economic hardship deferment, if you have a high amount of loan debt (most of us will). You can get 3 yrs worth of that. Also there are programs for fellowship forbearance/deferment, at least with my loan company.
I am going with College Loan Corp. 1-888-972-6311.
Talk to Gisele at ext. 2155 if you need to look into this. She is very knowledgeable and I got the best deal of all from her. My loans came out of the grace period before 7-1 and she showed me how to put them into forbearance (very easy to do) so we could get into the low interest. I talked with several different loan companies, including Sallie Mae, and not one of them suggested, or even hinted that I could do this to get the low interest rates. (This was back in late April.) Every other loan company I talked to, besides College Loan Corp., was just going to consolidate my loans at the then-higher rate and didn't even tell me the rates were going down 7-1, let alone help me get those rates.
Needless to say, I'm glad I made the call to CLC.
Oh, and another advantage to consolidating the UG loans. It makes your loan debt monthly pmt look a LOT smaller on your credit report. My "proposed" monthly payments will go down from $800+/month to ~$300/mo. Even in deferment, that looks a lot better to a creditor. You never know when you may need to borrow $1500 for a clunker to get around in, or a transmission or something! (Heaven forbid, of course, but you never know.) I need to refinance my house to pay my UG private loans so I'm really sensitive to what potential creditors are looking for. Debt-to-income ratio is a biggie, and although it may not be a problem for some of the younger single people w/o children, for those of us who are single parents, or are married with a working spouse....well, it just looks better to have that lower monthly amount because that's one of the first things creditors look at, right after bad debts, etc.
Cheers,
mompremed
(Soon to be MedStudentMom)
UHS, Class of 2006