I’m looking to go back to school, but I got the following message from one of the schools I requested financial with. “Based on information provided by the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS), we have determined that you may have received a total amount of student loans that exceeds the loan limits established for the federal loan programs.”
I currently have a Bachelors degree with one Direct Consolidated Unsub loan with an amount of $59,000. The other loan is Direct Consolidated Sub loan with an amount of $25,000.
I have no idea if I’m even eligible for any financial aide or not. Any advice is appreciated.
IIRC, the aggregate amount of loans is about where yours are for undergrad school. That would mean, you can’t take any more direct loans for undergrad school.
No, I was planning on going back to a two community college to take classes needed for my degree in teaching. That part I could possibly handle myself. But the real problem would be later on when I need to take some of the final classes later on at a four year university.
You can still go to school, but can’t receive federal loans. You might be eligible for some of the teacher programs offered to those who have non-education degrees.
My sister returned to get a Masters in ED through a program. She did have to sign for the loans but then they were forgiven.
I have to talk with the aide office/registration to see what options I might have. The good news would be that at least I wouldn’t be burying myself deeper in federal debt.
Right now my job at the hospital allows my current loans to work towards forgiveness.
Does your state have an alternate route to teacher certification for those who have other careers?
In my state, there is such a route. It’s competitive, but if you get accepted, you take courses in the summer, and then get your provisional certification. They are particularly looking for folks in shortage areas…so secondary school foreign languages, Sciences, math…
You should check…because in my state, this is either at no cost…or a very low cost.
Depending on your undergraduate major, an MAT program might be a good option for you. Those are often 12 months long and lead directly to state certification. Like the alternative route mentioned above, there may be some state money to help pay for a program in high need subject areas.
But I have to ask why on earth are you considering further education that would require more debt when you already have $84,000 of student debt? You write that you are currently in a loan forgiveness program. How much longer do you have left before those loans are gone? Can you find it in your heart to stick it out until that debt is vanquished? Find out how changing careers right now could affect the loan forgivensss arrangement that you currently have.
@thumper1 I’m in Illinois so I’ll have to ask about that. The problem I ran into was the school I transferred to was Nationally Accredited, not Regionally accredited. At least I was smart and got my associates first at a community college which was regionally accredited and also qualifies me to be a teacher’s aide. Right now I substitute part-time till summer hits.
@happymomof1 I could look at that too. The four college I talked to first, gave me a list of classes that I would need to take in order to get me on the teachers degree path. She marked what classes can transfer and what classes must be taken at their school. The good news is, at least most of those classes I could take at the community college and figure out a payment plan so at least I wouldn’t be accruing more debit.
I was planning on talking with the local community college and showing them the plan I was given just to double check with everything. Most of it is Gen-ed classes anyway.
The loan forgiveness plan on I’m on is the public service workers plan since I work at a 503C hospital. It’s going to be a while before that’s cleared up. As far as I know, I could change jobs, but it would have to be another qualifying employer.
@sybbie719 I’m looking to teacher either Elementary or Middle School. I like science and Special Education. I substituted both a few times.
If hired through them, you would work as a teacher under a transitional B certification, while you work on your initial certification .they would fund part of your masters.
Keep very good records of your payments/qualifying months for the loan forgiveness programs. Very few people have reached the 120 payment mark and had their loans forgiven.
There is a limited amount of loan eligibility for certain teacher prep programs. Your aid office will be able to tell you what you qualify to borrow.
If you received a loan over award in undergrad & you have consolidated all of your undergrad loans, the consolidation is considered to have resolved the over award. Your aid office is responsible for reviewing your loans & giving you the green light to borrow.
@twoinanddone Thanks! I just looked at my statement and even though my payment has been zero so far, it looks like I haven’t gotten credited towards the loan forgiveness yet. It been too long yet, but still. I sent an email to the loan servicing company to find out about that.
Have you been submitting your employment certifications for PSLF? If not, you won’t see any credit. If you have submitted certifications, you should see credit only for the months you certified & only if you were in active repayment during those months. Although a $0 payment counts as a payment, you don’t get credit until your payment is actually “due” … so if you were in grace or forbearance, you don’t get payment credit. Also, if you have a $0 payment but choose to pay something, you get into paid ahead status … and when that happens, you don’t get any credit for any months when you were in paid ahead status. To keep this from happening, tell your loan servicer that you do not ever want to be put into paid ahead status.
@kelsmom As far as know I should be under pslf since I had submitted my signed paperwork nearly a year ago and have been in active payment status for about 6 months now.
Also my loan provider automatically changed to fed loan servicing. A letter from them stated it was due to qualifying for pslf. I know I’ll have to send in paperwork again later this year to keep my status up.
Yes, FedLoan services all PSLF loans. Just submitting the paperwork to be in PSLF does not do anything other than put you in PSLF. You will only show qualifying payments after you submit paperwork to prove you were in a qualifying job. Was the paperwork you submitted actually an employer certification form? If so, you should show qualifying payments for the months certified on the form … assuming you were not in grace period or forbearance or in paid-ahead status during those months.
@kelsmom I had an HR person sign off on the certificate (I forget exactly what it’s called) that I was/am employed at the hospital. Then my loan provider changed to FedLoan and they sent me a notice to let me know that was now in PSLF. This was over the span of several weeks last year.
I had also talked a student loans government rep who told me that before all that could be done, I had to consolidate some loans into direct loans first.
If you had to consolidate for your loans to qualify for PSLF, your servicer may have put all of your loans in forbearance until the consolidation was completed. In that case, none of the months were eligible to be considered a payment that counts toward for the 120 payments until the consolidation was completed.
@kelsmom Ok that would make sense. I’m trying to recall back off the top of my head) I know I was under forbearance (it took several weeks) when Navient was handling the consolidation request. I was able to change providers too, which I did to Cornerstone.
Somewhere in there I also applied for PSLF too. Cornerstone became my provider for a very short time. Then Fedloan sent a letter saying you’re approved for pslf so we’re now going to handle your loans.
I “should be” out of consolidation/forbearance for at least a few months now, but I could be wrong.
I did email them last Thursday to ask for details on why I haven’t gotten the credits and/or how to get the pslf credits. I’ll give them a few more days and then contact them again if I don’t hear anything.
You are wise to stay on top of this. It’s important to make sure you are getting proper credit for your payments. You will only get credit retroactively, though … since you only get credit when you certify income for months you already worked. It’s a good idea to certify annually when you submit income information for your income driven repayment plan.