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Home Ask Ask the Edvisor How will dropping to half-time status affect my student loan grace period?

How will dropping to half-time status affect my student loan grace period?

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By Edvisors Network
November 18, 2015
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Question:

I am enrolled as a full-time student this semester. I borrowed a Direct Unsubsidized Loan to help ease the cost of this term’s expenses. I am struggling with several of my classes and my academic advisor thinks that I should drop these courses but it will leave me enrolled as a less than half-time student. If I return to full time enrollment status next semester, how will this impact my loan grace period?

Answer:

The grace period can be thought of as a “waiting period” which affords a student loan borrower time before he or she has to start repaying his or her federal student loans. Grace period begins when a student loan borrower graduates or drops below half-time enrollment. Typically, a grace period attaches to each Direct Unsubsidized Loan. When you drop below half-time enrollment, the waiting period on your loans starts to run and as a consequence, you start using up your grace period. When you return to half-time or greater enrollment, your loans return to an in-school deferment. But, as long as you do not use up all of your grace period, before you return to school, then, when you graduate, the grace period clock resets and your full six-month grace period begins again.

For example, you drop below half-time enrollment in the fall. Fall is 4 months long. This uses up 4 months of the 6-month grace period, so you have 2 months left. If you return to half-time enrollment in the spring and then graduate, your loans will get the 6-month “waiting period” and you will not have to begin repaying your loans until a full six months after graduation.

Now, if you drop below half-time enrollment in both fall and spring, you will use up your entire grace period. The grace period on each loan is over and you must begin repayment of the loans.  If the next fall, you resume half-time enrollment, the loans will be placed in an in-school deferment but when you graduate, they will return to a repayment period status immediately, with no grace period, which results in you having to make immediate loan payments.

Related Content

How Long is Federal Student Loan Grace Period and How It Works?
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May 04, 2021
Most student loans have a six-month grace period. During this time, you do not need to make payments on your loans, however interest will still accrue.
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  • How Long is Federal Student Loan Grace Period and How It Works?
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Edvisors (“Edvisors Network, Inc.”) provides independent advertising-supported platforms for consumers to search compare and apply for private student loans. Loan offers from participating lenders that appear on our websites are not affiliated with any college and/or universities, and there are no colleges and/or universities which endorse Edvisors’ products or services. Lender search results do not constitute an official college preferred lender list. Edvisors receives compensation from lenders that appear on this site. This compensation may impact the placement of where lenders appear on this site, for example, the order in which the lenders appear when included in a list. Not all lenders participate in our sites and lenders that do participate may not offer loans to every school.

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