You didn't really ask what you wanted to know so I answered what you asked and that was "will my rate go down" but more importantly I sense by your reply that what you really wanted was a quick, off the cuff directive which I won't ever do (it drives my kids nuts at first but then they realize it was worth going through the learning process since a lot of this translates to other financing they will surely be doing: house, practice, car etc and I never thought of it as "wiz talk" but quite the opposite and if "wiz talk" is really a nice way of saying "huh?, I didn't get that" I'll try it again in a different way but if it's really "tell me what to do," you're on your own. Phew.. big run on)
I will, however, do my best to explain to you how this all works and let you decide how to manage your own portfolio or to make the decision to take the time to figure it out. It's good practice for the real world, trust me and know my posting is not written to be insulting to you (or the other readers) but to help make it a bit clearer.
The undergrad interest rate is changing annually with each new loan. The loan from your freshman year would be a fixed 6.8, your sophomore a fixed 5.4 etc.. until your senior loan would be the magical 3.4 and Congress can officially tell the world: we cut your rate in half-- hooray for us! What they neglected to mention was that it would be tiered in for undergrad only and funnily enough, the New York Times forgot to highlight that in the headline saying "Dems cut the rate for students" (I'm a political junky as well). Your freshman rate will never be the lower since it is fixed depending on the rate in effect for those loans which Sketch points out (go Sketch!). Consolidation rates are still the weighted average rounded to the nearest 1/8th percent fixed for the life of the loan.
Everything in lending revolves around the date of disbursement: when did the money change hands. The rates are different for undergrad (tiering down) and grad (fixed 6.8 for all disbursements after July 1, 2006) and are calculated based on the rates in play during a period (always July 1 - June 30). If you were a second year MD your rates for both years are fixed at 6.8 and GradPLUS at 8.5 (or 7.9 with Direct Lending). If you were a 3rd year MD, I'd expect you to have a variable rate loan using the calc in my first post (unless you consolidated it into a fixed 4.75-- weighted 4.72 rounded to the nearest 1/2 % to get 4.75 fixed) and then 2 at fixed 6.8. What you should all be concluding from this is: I may have a different portfolio from others.
As for do I think the rates will be lowered for Grad? I tackled that in another posting months ago and hopefully it's not too "wizzy" for you. I'd add a smile so you'd know that was meant to be funny but I'm not that skilled with all that
I'm definitely not a computer wiz but this lending I know extremely well and I'm really funny in person and I give the best darn exit loan counseling session in the country.
