Student Loan Consolidation Programs

First you must determine the status of your current loans and gather all the specific loan information from all of the lenders. If you are in good standing on all of your loans then you can move on. If any of your loans are in default status then you have some other work ahead. If you have defaulted student loans then you must return them to good standing and my recommendation would be to use the Federal Student Loan Rehabilitation Program. You can easily find all of the info you need on this program here.

Once you have all of the info on all of your student loans and you have verified that they are all in good standing you are ready to start looking at the different types of student loan consolidation programs. There are 4 basic types of student loan consolidation programs:

1) Standard Repayment - A standard repayment student loan consolidation program can consolidate all of your loans into one payment spread out across up to ten years depending on student loan amounts and other variables.

2)Extended Repayment - An extended repayment student loan consolidation program allows the balance of all of your student loans to be spread out over 30 years. Obviously the payments would be smaller but you will pay more in interest.

3)Graduated Repayment - A graduated repayment student loan consolidation program can range from 12-30 with your monthly payment increasing every 2 years.

4)Income Contingent Repayment - An income contingent student loan consolidation program sets a monthly payment based on gross income and several other factors including size of family and total loan amount.

Look at your personal position and determine which of these types of student loan consolidation programs would be right for you. No one can make this decision for you and keep in mind that every different type has different positives and negatives.

Now you have to choose a lender. This is obviously the tricky part. My personal suggestion is to call every single lender that you are interested in and talk to them over the phone. There are many "incentives" and "benefits" available based on specific criteria and the only way to find out what every lender can offer you is to talk to them. Keep in mind that every time you apply for a loan of any kind your credit gets hit. Be sure to find out the specific credit requirements and be honest when telling reps from lenders about your credit and loan status.

Make a list of the different student loan consolidation programs that you are considering ranking them from most desirable (based on benefit and likely hood of approval) and apply for them one at a time awaiting a response from each lender before applying for another. The worst thing you can do is run around online filling out forms without doing any research.