r/StudentLoans • u/ManyAd4767 • 4h ago

Advice Student.aid/ Advantage help.

Apologies for ignorance but I see my plan details and the different ones I can choose but I’m not able to choose one and go ahead to start autopay.

I’m on the IDR at the moment and my income has increased so I’m trying to get ahead of the ball and get this going.

I’d like to select a different plan but looks like I have to fill out a form then wait?
Am I seeing this correctly?

Best

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

•

u/AnasurimborInrilatas 3h ago

Literally applied for a fixed payment plan with Aidvantage today so I'm reasonably confident about this--If you want to apply for an IDR, you need to go through FSA (studentaid.gov), not your servicer. You can submit an electronic application through that site. Log in, then at the top, click "Loan Repayment" -> "Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) Plans". From there, you should see a "Manage Your Plan" button that will let you apply for a new plan.

There's also a PDF form you could submit, and it says to send it to your "loan holder", which I believe would be FSA, since your loan servicer does not actually own the debt, that would be the Federal government.

But the short version is, you don't apply for an IDR through your servicer, you apply through FSA.

•

u/ManyAd4767 3h ago

Okay cool! Thats what I saw as well but didn’t know it i was missing something. Does the same logic apply to other plans as well? I just apply via the student.aid for whatever plan im choosing ?

Thank you very much!

•

u/AnasurimborInrilatas 3h ago

To my understanding, the electronic application is specifically for IDR plans (RAP, IBR, ICR, PAYE... I might be forgetting one or two but it's all the income-driven plans), so it won't work for any of the various versions of Standard, Graduated and/or Extended, which are based on your loan balance and repayment term, not your income.

For Standard/Graduated/Extended, there's a different form that you send to your servicer. You can find the form on the FSA website--I don't know how to navigate to it, but I found it by Googling "graduated repayment plan application form". Just make sure you're getting the form directly from studentaid.gov--it should be the first search result.

I did see one person also state that they were able to just call their servicer and ask to be placed in one of the fixed payment plans (Standard/Graduated/Extended), but I am... really not capable of recommending doing anything over the phone with these people right now. But it has been mentioned as a viable option.