What changed on July 1, 2026?
A one-way door opened. Under the 2026 overhaul, taking out any new federal loan — or making any Direct Consolidation Loan — on or after July 1, 2026 permanently removes access to the legacy repayment plans for all of your loans, not just the new one. That's the old Standard, Graduated, and Extended plans, plus IBR, PAYE, and ICR, all gone at once. What remains afterward is the new system: RAP and the Tiered Standard plan. The rule is summarized in the Congressional Research Service's overview of the statute.
Irreversible, and easy to trigger by accident. Consolidation is sometimes suggested for unrelated reasons — servicer moves, tidying multiple loans into one bill. Since July 2026, agreeing to it also means giving up IBR permanently. If you run the comparison on the homepage with all-pre-2026 loans, this appears in your watch-outs.
What would you lose, and what would you keep?
| After a 2026+ consolidation | Plans |
|---|---|
| Lost (for all your loans) | IBR, PAYE, ICR, old Standard, Graduated, Extended |
| Available | RAP (income-driven) and Tiered Standard (fixed) |
The Tiered Standard term is set by your total balance: under $25,000 repays over 10 years; $25,000–$49,999 over 15; $50,000–$99,999 over 20; $100,000 and up over 25 — with a $50 monthly minimum, and no PSLF credit. RAP's terms are covered in the full bracket table guide. For many borrowers RAP is a genuinely good plan — the point isn't that the new menu is bad, it's that the trade is permanent and deserves numbers before signatures.
Why do people consolidate at all?
Combining several loans into one payment, moving out of an old loan program, or resetting terms — the official consolidation guide at StudentAid.gov walks through what consolidation does and doesn't change, including which benefits can be lost. Two reasons still carry real weight: getting FFEL loans into the Direct system (below), and rescuing a defaulted loan. What's new in 2026 is that the plan-menu consequence now dwarfs most of the traditional ones: whatever consolidation solves, it also decides your repayment-plan universe for good.
Worth knowing about the loan itself, since it is easy to picture consolidation as simply rearranging what you owe: any unpaid interest you have accrued is added to your principal, and the new rate is the weighted average of your old rates rounded up to the nearest one-eighth of a percent — so the balance you start from is a little larger and the rate a little higher than the loans going in.
What happens to payments you've already made?
This is the question most worth asking before you consolidate, and the honest answer is that nobody has published one for the plan you would land on.
For Public Service Loan Forgiveness the rule is settled and favorable: 34 CFR 685.219(c)(3) says a Direct Consolidation Loan carries the weighted average of the qualifying PSLF payments made on the loans it repaid. Your PSLF progress is not thrown away; it is averaged across the loans that went in, so consolidating a long-paid loan together with a brand-new one pulls the average down.
For income-driven forgiveness, the picture is different. There is a rule that carries qualifying payments across a consolidation — but by its own words it applies to the PAYE, ICR, and IBR plans, and a consolidation made now cannot be repaid under any of them. RAP is what you would actually be on, and RAP's forgiveness paragraphs never mention consolidation at all. The Department was asked during rulemaking to add language stopping consolidation from improving a borrower's forgiveness position and declined, saying it has no way to judge that consistently. StudentAid.gov's consolidation page says nothing either way.
So treat your RAP forgiveness count as an open question, not a guarantee in either direction. If you are years into an income-driven plan and near forgiveness, that uncertainty is itself a reason to get the decision in writing from your servicer before consolidating. Our comparison shows you both outcomes side by side — what your timeline looks like if the payments carry, and what it looks like if the clock starts over — rather than picking one and presenting it as fact.
One related trap worth knowing if you are pursuing PSLF: consolidating resets the window for PSLF Buyback to the new loan's first disbursement date, so months you were hoping to buy back should be bought back before you consolidate, not after.
If your loans are FFEL, consolidation is the way in
Loans from the old Federal Family Education Loan program are not Direct Loans, and RAP's eligible-loan list does not include them — neither does PSLF, which requires Direct loans. For FFEL borrowers, consolidating into a Direct Consolidation Loan is not merely one option among several; it is the route to an income-driven plan and to PSLF at all. The lockout still applies afterward, so the choice is between the fixed FFEL-side plans you have now and the RAP-plus-Tiered menu on the other side. If you enter FFEL loans in the calculator, the RAP card says this on the card itself.
The Parent PLUS door that already closed
Before July 1, 2026, consolidating a Parent PLUS loan into a Direct Consolidation Loan was the one route to an income-driven plan (ICR) for those loans. That window has passed: a consolidation made now is a post-2026 consolidation, and Parent PLUS loans — and consolidations containing them — are excluded from RAP. Parent PLUS borrowers weighing options today are choosing among fixed plans, which is also why this calculator currently says "not yet supported" for Parent PLUS rather than showing numbers computed under the wrong rules.
What's worth checking before consolidating?
- Which plans you'd be giving up, and what the new loan would cost. Run the comparison on the homepage with your loans as they are, and tick Considering consolidating. You get a before-and-after on your own numbers in one run: the plans that survive, the payment and lifetime cost on each side, and the single loan you would end up with — balances merged, unpaid interest added to principal, and the new rate set to the weighted average of your rates rounded up to the nearest one-eighth of a percent.
- Whether the surviving plans fit your income. The post-SAVE options guide covers all nine plans and who qualifies for each.
- What your servicer's suggestion is actually for. If consolidation comes up in a call about something else, the lockout is worth raising explicitly before agreeing — servicer contacts are listed here.