Pending loans with first disbursements October 1 or later
With the College Cost Reduction and Access Act going into effect in October, please consider moving up the first disbursement date for new loans to occur before October 1, 2007. By doing this, students will qualify for more generous benefits, possibly saving them hundreds to thousands of dollars. Any loans that are disbursed after October 1, 2007, will be subject to the changes created under the College Cost Reduction and Access Act.
Consolidation loans
Due to recent legislation, please be advised that terms and conditions on new consolidation loans are also about to change. We will not be able to offer the same benefits as we have in the past on consolidation loans that are funded on or after October 1, 2007.
Loan disbursements before October 1, 2007, will still qualify for more generous benefits. For students who have no underlying loans with T.H.E., we will do our best to get loans released from other lenders. However, if we don’t receive a release from students’ previous lenders in time, we will not be able to accommodate them under our current program.
We have a number of students who have already applied for consolidation with us but have their request on hold as we wait for their grace period to expire. These students have received notification that we need to forego their grace period in order to consolidate their loans before October 1, 2007. We are moving up consolidation so that students can receive the benefits they were expecting on their T.H.E. consolidation loan. Students who had requested that we hold their applications until grace end have the opportunity to place their consolidation loans into forbearance through their grace period end date. In addition, T.H.E. will pay the subsidized interest that accrues during this forbearance on any subsidized Stafford or Perkins loans that were paid off earlier than the borrower had requested.
The challenge we face is receiving payoff information from other lenders and schools (for Perkins loans) in time to fund these loans by September 30, 2007.