You will receive a 6-month grace period before the first payment of your Federal Stafford Loan must be made. Your grace period begins the day after you cease to be enrolled at least half-time, withdraw or graduate from an eligible school.  Your lender will notify you of your first payment due date while you are in your grace period.  If you do not receive this information, it is your responsibility to contact your lender. 

If at any time you use any portion of your grace period and re-enroll in school, your grace period will be the difference of the 6-month period minus the period used.  For example, if you ceased to be enrolled at least half-time and used 2 months of your grace period before re-enrolling at half-time, then you will only have 4 months of your grace period left.

Your grace period does not include any period up to 3 years during which you are called or ordered to active duty for more than 30 days from a reserve component of the Armed Forces of the United States, including the period necessary for you to resume enrollment at the next available regular enrollment period.

When the time comes to begin loan repayment, your lender offers several flexible repayment options to help you easily transition into repayment.

With repayment, you can prepay all or part of your loan at any time without penalty.  Prepayment may substantially reduce your interest costs.

• Standard repayment is the traditional approach.  Standard repayment requires minimum monthly payments of $50.  The payment amount may be higher depending on your loan balance.

• Graduated repayment sets your payments to be smaller in the beginning of repayment and gradually increases in states throughout the repayment period.

• Income-sensitive repayment adjusts your payment annually based on your gross income.

• Extended repayment is only available for a borrower whose first loan was made on or after October 7, 1998.  The borrower must have more than $30,000 in loans.  The payment amounts can be either fixed annual or graduated.  The maximum repayment term is 25 years.  

• Loan consolidation is available after you have completed your educational program.  This program enables you to combine loans from different lenders into one loan, with one interest rate and repayment schedule.  While loan consolidation can extend your repayment period and lower your monthly payments, the interest rate and total interest you pay on the loan may be greater than if you kept the loans separate.

To help students estimate their monthly student loan payment, click on the icon below to calculate your estimated repayment amount:

CLICK

ON

THE

MONEY