Currently The Department of Education is not accepting new digital consolidation applications while it is reviewing the latest lawsuit against the SAVE plan. Paper applications will be accepted. If you would like to go ahead and submit a paper application, you can follow the steps in this article.
When you choose to consolidate your loans to pursue PSLF or become eligible for an Income-Driven repayment plan, your new PSLF progress will be the weighted average of your previous payments made on all Direct Loans.
Borrowers will receive a weighted average of existing qualifying payments toward PSLF and IDR Forgiveness when they consolidate their Direct Loans. For example, a borrower with 60 qualifying payments on Direct Loan with a balance of $30,000 who consolidates their loan with another Direct Loan with a balance of $30,000 with 0 qualifying payments will have a new payment count of 30 payments. The weighted average will take into account the amount of payments on each loan as well as the current balance on each loan.
FFEL loans are NOT eligible for the weighted average and any payments made on FFEL loans will NOT count towards PSLF or IDR forgiveness. Payments will reset when you consolidate this type of loan. If you have FFEL and Direct loans, we recommend that you do NOT consolidate the loans together so your Direct loan payment count does not reset.