<p>I don’t think you have to take out the Stafford - and since it’s UNsubsidized and at 6.8%, you might not want to (the subsidized Stafford, though, is a good deal).<br>
Our oldest had a subsidized loan as part of the FA package. When the school found out we were taking out a private loan, they assumed we would want to take out some UN-sub Stafford to maximize the Stafford eligibility. We said “No, thanks, we have good credit and are getting a private loan at a better rate than the unsub loan, so we <em>don’t</em> want that, thank-you-very-much for asking though”.</p>
<p>on edit - although the PLUS loan has a huge origination fee, the unsub Stafford’s origination fee is only something like 0.5% - not bad.</p>