If you consolidate a student loan or PLUS loan through the government's Direct Loan program, between now and Sept. 30 . You can get an additional rate cut of 0.8 percentage points. To keep this rate, you have to pay on time for the first 12 months. If you miss one payment date, the rate cut still applies to your first 12 months. After that, you'd revert to whatever your normal rate would have been on a consolidation loan.
Private lenders give a variety of discounts, too.
At Collegiate Funding Services, you'd get 1 percentage point off your rate, after making your first 36 loan-consolidation payments on time. At Sallie Mae, there's no such discount for consolidation loans. But you'd get 2 percentage points off your original loans, after making your first 48 payments on time. If you have PLUS loans . You can consolidate them, too, although no discounts apply.