Loan Repayment
Understanding repayment options after school is crucial to help students manage their student loan debt. Loan repayment is handled by loan servicers who work with Direct Loans to manage your loan repayment. You can determine who your servicer is and see a comprehensive view of all your federal student loans by visiting your Student Aid account. Once you determine who your loan servicer(s) is, we highly recommend that you visit their website and setup an account. This will help you to better understand when your loans go into repayment and stay on-top payments.
Typically, all of your Federal Direct Loans will have the same servicer. However, if you received a Federal Perkins Loan or Federal Nursing Student Loan, these loans are typically serviced by third-party servicers. Both the Perkins and Nursing loans are managed by the University of San Francisco who partners with a third-party servicer to service these loans.
For students with Federal Direct Loans, the Department of Education offers several repayment plans to help students successfully repay their loans. You can review the repayment plan options on the infographic below.
Even more valuable information about the various payment plans can be found on Federal Student Aid.
Tip: Setup an account on your servicer's website and keep your contact information up-to-date.
Repayment Calculators
To get a better understanding of your monthly payment amounts, there are various loan repayment calculators available to you. We recommend that your regularly visit loan repayment calculators to ensure you have an understanding of how taking out loans now will affect you in the future.
Federal Student Aid offers a repayment calculator that uses actually student loan data. This is a great resources to determine your loan repayments when you’re close to graduation.
If you are trying to get a better understanding of what your loan repayments may look like on future loans, here’s a short list of calculators to help out: