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Hi Folks,

So by the time I start law school next fall, I will have gained 5 years of nonprofit work experience. This is something I definitely want to use to my advantage for loan forgiveness, so I'm now considering whether or not to apply to a part-time or full time program.

Here are the benefits/costs I'm considering:

Part-time
-can continue to work throughout law school to earn income ($60K-$65K per year)
-continuing work (without gaps) will set me up to be forgiven for the whole $100k+ in undergrad and grad loans (plus any law school debt I'll acquire) by 2017.
-probably can get some legal work experience at my organization
-probably wont be able to get the kind of substantive legal work experience that the avg full time student gets before graduating
-can afford to continue making payments during deferment

Full-time
-put off loan forgiveness to 2020 (presuming I get a nonprofit/ public service job immediately upon graduation)
-gain substantive legal work experience that the avg full time student does
-deferment while enrolled (w/ substantially higher loan payments for the last 5 years of repayment unless I end up getting a low paying job which will help for the IBR plan)
-can probably get some help from 'rents to make payments so that I don't get behind in the 120 payments condition for the forgiveness.

Please let me know if there are other components that are worth consideration here.

I would be careful of the wording on the loan forgiveness, I had been under the impression that to clock restarted when additional debt was taken on. Otherwise someone in a long painful PhD program could arrange to have loan debt forgiven a few months after take their final loan.

haus wrote:I would be careful of the wording on the loan forgiveness, I had been under the impression that to clock restarted when additional debt was taken on. Otherwise someone in a long painful PhD program could arrange to have loan debt forgiven a few months after take their final loan.

I haven't seen this anywhere. What's your source?

For IBR "Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program", the forgiveness point is based on 120 monthly payments, your old loans may well have had payments on them, but your new loans (for law school) will not, at least not until after you receive the loan.

Hence your last loan check for the spring semester of your 4th year will be deposited into your account around January of 2015, the first payment will likely be Feb of 2015 at the earliest, meaning that this loan would not reach forgiveness until Jan of 2025 (assuming that you maintain eligible full time employment for the duration and the laws do not change).

Here is a Q&A that you may find useful.
http://www.ibrinfo.org/faq.vp.html#_more_loans

haus wrote:For IBR "Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program", the forgiveness point is based on 120 monthly payments, your old loans may well have had payments on them, but your new loans (for law school) will not, at least not until after you receive the loan.

Hence your last loan check for the spring semester of your 4th year will be deposited into your account around January of 2015, the first payment will likely be Feb of 2015 at the earliest, meaning that this loan would not reach forgiveness until Jan of 2025 (assuming that you maintain eligible full time employment for the duration and the laws do not change).

Here is a Q&A that you may find useful.
http://www.ibrinfo.org/faq.vp.html#_more_loans

thank you. Very helpful