<p>Is the Perkins Loan only for NY colleges?</p>
<p>The Perkins loan is a campus based federal loan meaning a school is given very limited amount of $$s to award and once they award those they have no more. As the funding is so limited (unlike the Stafford loan) each school decides it’s own criteria for how to award the Perkins loan to it’s students.</p>
<p>Thanks Swimcatsmom!</p>
<p>Schools also have to decide whether they want to participate in the Perkins program, and the government has limited funds to distribute for this program as well, so a lot of schools do not even offer Perkins loans.</p>
<p>The government hasn’t provided new Perkins funding in recent years. While the government provides Perkins funds to schools, the schools themselves do all the work for the loans when they must be repaid. Schools are using repaid loans to give new loans. Recycling at its finest.</p>
<p>That’s interesting Kelsmom.</p>
<p>My daughter didn’t get it or the first time this year. I am guessing it is because she got the SMART grant so can’t complain :D. Just a small direct loan this year.</p>
<p>My explanation was a bit simplistic, but here is the way it works (from a Dear Colleague letter):
Under the Perkins Loan Program, schools make low interest loans to needy undergraduate and graduate students. In previous years, Federal funds generally provided 75 percent of the new capital contributions to a school’s Perkins Revolving Fund and the school provided the remaining 25 percent. However, there were no new Federal funds obligated for the Perkins Loan Program for the 2008-2009 Award Year. A school is authorized to use cash from its revolving fund up to the amount of its Perkins Loan Level of Expenditure. School revolving fund resources at 1,657 schools are estimated to benefit 911,900 students. </p>
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<p>Schools figure out how to distribute the funds. We have a computer program that automatically awards aid, so it gets awarded based on certain criteria.</p>
<p>Uh - simplistic is good.</p>