Where is the other $200 from a Stafford loan?

<p>Sorry if this has been asked before. I was looking at my daughter's Stafford loan information on the National Student Loan Data System for Students. It shows her Subsidized loan for $2000, and then shows two disbursements to her school for $900 each. What happened to the other $200?</p>

<p>It sounds like her loan is not fully disbursed. Have her look at her 2010-11 awards on her student account. How is the loan allocated? I am thinking maybe the school allocated it as $900 fall/$900 spring/$200 summer. If it’s actually $1000 fall/$1000 spring in her account, it sounds like maybe something is messed up.</p>

<p>(Only the disbursed amount, $1800, should be showing up as Outstanding Principal Balance - is that what it shows?)</p>

<p>Thanks for your response. </p>

<p>It is actually the UNsubsidized loan in question. I looked at the disbursements, and even stranger on nelnet, , it shows one in August 2010 for $900 and one in January 2011 for $800.
I’ve made four $100 payments, one per month beginning in November. The outstanding balance is $1622. I can’t find the original amount on the website anymore, just the payments. The subsidized loan shows $3500 on nelnet. </p>

<p>I also looked at the bursar account, and it shows two Stafford loan disbursements for $1742 and $995 each semester. That adds up to $5474, not $5500. </p>

<p>It would appear that the subsidized loan disbursement is wacky, too. </p>

<p>Could I have gotten ahead of it somehow that it didn’t all disburse? And another weird thing, my payment history and my web payment history don’t match. The payment history shows three payments, the web payment history shows four. </p>

<p>I think I’d better call them! The school and nelnet. </p>

<p>This loan stuff is so very confusing, I am learning as I go…I dread making the phone calls.</p>

<p>Remember, the actual money disbursed to the student’s account is net of loan fees. Multiply the gross disbursement by 0.995 to get the net disbursement. The student’s financial aid awards should show the gross; the account statement will show the net.</p>

<p>The $1742 disbursement on the bursar statement is a gross disbursement of $1750 per term, and the $995 disbursement is a gross disbursement of $1000 per term(divide the net by 0.995 to get the gross). This is a total of $5500 disbursed.</p>

<p>The difference between the $5474 and the $5500 is probably the loan origination fee…I though it was $34, not $26, but I may be wrong or there may be a rebate in there.</p>

<p>Do they mail bills and award letters to students? I always find it’s easier to figure out what they’re doing by comparing the awards with the credits and charges listed on the bills. Not that it’s ever straightfoward:(</p>

<p>Your Nelnet information may be showing the current OPB (outstanding principal balance), which may well make sense if you have already paid $400 toward the unsub loan. Only $1000 had disbursed at the time you paid the first two payments, so you would have paid most of the $200 toward the principal. You would have had very little accumulated interest for the 3rd & 4th payments, so almost all the payment would have paid down the loan. Call them … I would bet that’s the case.</p>

<p>Your school will not consider what you have paid on the loans, so they will show what was disbursed for the year. What you see in NSLDS will be the current balances after your payments, and these may differ from the amount in Nelnet because NSLDS always lags behind. It takes awhile for NSLDS to update (which is why I love that all loans are DL now & I can see real time updates in COD, which is the government system, rather than waiting for NSLDS to update, when I need to see if another school updated a transfer student’s loans).</p>

<p>Sk8ermom, there is a loan origination fee & also a loan rebate for a total of 0.5%.</p>

<p>kelsmom and sk8rmom:</p>

<p>I knew there were fees for the Parent Plus loan, but either didn’t know, or had forgotten about fees for the Stafford loan, so what you are saying about what is on the bursar account makes sense now. And no, our school doesn’t mail bills, everything is online. I will call nelnet, as suggested, to see about the balance. I was trying to keep ahead of the interest a little. It looks like I got ahead more than I thought, so that’s good news. </p>

<p>I get it now. Thanks for explaining it so well.</p>