Hi Heather,

I am a recent law school graduate who is heading into the Air Force JAG Corps. The Air Force offers a student loan repayment assistance program which will pay 1/3 (capped at a certain amount of course) of your loan principal each year for the first three years of service. I have multiple federal and I would like to consolidate them to get a single payment amount. I have been trying to find information whether consolidation would render me ineligible for the loan repayment program but I have not been able to find a definitive answer. I have looked at the student loan repayment assistance application form and it says that if you have multiple loans you have to rank them and fill out a form for each one. It seems that consolidation would make that process easier. Then there is a checkbox asking if it is a consolidated loan but I do not know what the result of checking “yes” would be.

Obviously I would like to take advantage of the program so any advice would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

Unfortunately there are several programs offered by the DOD and they determine all the rules, your servicer just enforces what the DOD says.  So ask your commanding officer and they can tell you.  While I have an educated guess from experience I don’t want to give it based on the fact I never go to work with this one on one (since it is a military and not servicer program).