Saturday, January 2, 2016

Loan Forgivness

I want to begin by saying I don't know everything about this process.  I encourage you to contact your loan provider and read the resources I'm going to link in this post. The purpose of this post is to help others through the process by describing my own experience.

School loans....WOO HOO!

I went into grad school anticipating no loan forgiveness because I do not teach at a Title 1 school.  I saw a post by Education to the Core on FB about loan forgiveness and decided to investigate.  My search led me to this site:


If you've done any searching on this topic, you've probably seen this page.  Upon reading it I discovered this link:


On my first attempt searching the directory, I found nothing.  This search box is extremely picky.  If you don't type the school's name EXACTLY like it is listed, it will not turn up in your search results.  I searched my state's entire directory and found my school.

Three big things to look out for.  You must have taught at your eligible school for five consecutive years.  Your school must have been eligible for those years.  You cannot have school loans prior to 10/1/98.  

The rest is all paperwork.  This needs to be completed by you and your Chief Administrative Officer.  My CAO was at our central office.  This document also has information about your personal eligibility.  Just because your school is eligible, doesn't mean you are.  Read carefully.



I faxed my paperwork and the waiting began.

Word to the wise: complete it exactly as directed.  I began this process in August and it was sent back three weeks later denied because I didn't write the date correctly (M/D/YYYY instead of MM/DD/YYYY).  I was a little irritated.  It also said I had not completed my fifth year at my school (the end of the 2014-2015 school year).  That made me even more irritated.  

After submitting the paperwork again at the end of September, I didn't hear anything for a month.  I called the loan provider and they were able to tell me that I had passed their level of the application process and it had been sent to the US Department of Education.  The loan provider also told me that the fall is when they have the most requests so things took longer than normal.  I would not be expected to pay anything within a grace period as long as I was waiting for a response.  

AND TODAY I GOT MY RESPONSE!

Hope this helps!  Let me know if I can help you in any way.  I have some "free time" now that I'm finished with school. :)