You must continue to make payments on your existing loans, until consolidation is completed. After the 180-day period, you may not include additional loans in the outstanding Consolidation loan. It depends on the amount of your student loan debt. The more you owe, the longer the repayment period. Please see the following table for guidelines.
Forbearances are available by contacting the lender.
Deferments are available and are based on a number of factors such as, the date the Consolidation loan is made, whether you included all your loans in the Consolidation loan, and the extent to which deferment privileges have been used on the loans. Some common deferments are education-related, unemployment, and economic hardship. If you consolidate with your spouse, you and your spouse must be simultaneously eligible for a deferment. You are not required to be eligible for the same type of deferment, but you both must be eligible for a deferment. If you use the Easy Pay program by authorizing automatic payments from your bank account, your interest rate will be reduced by .25 percent.