Bookmarks
Archive
« How do I get a personal loan with bad credit?
Where can you get a loan if you have bad credit and need to rebuild? »

 

What is the difference between a federal Perkins loan and a subsidized direct loan?

goody asked:


So I recieved my Financial aid reward for college and was offered a perkins loan and a subsidized direct loan. My question is what is the difference and If I were to choose only one which one would be better. both are of the same amount.

Leon

Tags: , ,

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 3:45 am and is filed under Loans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “What is the difference between a federal Perkins loan and a subsidized direct loan?”

  1. mz_diva_1 Says:
    March 23rd, 2009 at 8:07 pm

    Marlene

    If I’m not mistaken, an unsubsidized loan is one that you pay the principle and the interest. The subsidized loan is one that the government pays the interest. HTH

  2. NotAnyoneYouKnow Says:
    March 25th, 2009 at 8:47 am

    Pedro

    The Perkins loan has the lowest interest rate of any federal financial aid loan - the fixed rate on the Perkins is 5%, versus 6% for the subsidized Stafford that you were also offered. The Perkins is offered to students who are judged to have “exceptional” need.

    The Perkins is also superior because there are no “origination” fees associated with it. The full amount of the loan will be credited to your student account, unlike the Stafford, which has a 2% origination fee. This is because the lender on a Perkins loan is your school, rather than a bank.

    The only possible downside of the Perkins (compared to the Stafford) is that the repayment period on a Perkins loan is 10 years, whereas the repayment on a Stafford ranges from 10 to 25, depending on the amount borrowed.

    I hope that helped - by the way, the Stafford is an excellent loan, too - far better than anything you could get from any non-governmental (private) source.

    Good luck!

  3. Found-1 Says:
    March 28th, 2009 at 8:40 am

    Jean

    The Perkins loan will be better, choose that one. Better interest and also many more options on getting it discharged / forgiven (so you don’t have to pay it back) later.

    See the discharge options for both on pages 34 and 35.

Leave a Reply

Search
Categories