生活資訊:How does COVID-19 affect those who are applying to college, are in college now or graduated from college with college loan balances?

2020年5月8日    

HS Juniors and Seniors

  1. Many colleges are delaying enrollment deposit date, going test optional, waiving application fee, giving students more time to submit their application documents. Please contact the colleges that you have applied or plan to apply for, to receive more details.
  2. The College Board has cancelled the June SAT test, but still plans to offer testing from August to December 2020. The ACT will still have testing on June 13th & July 25th, while also adding new test dates (6/20 & 7/18). The 2020 AP test dates have also been updated. Both testing services are considering an “in-home” testing version in addition to the regular “in-school” tests. Please pay attention to any updates in test dates.
  3. The pandemic may be a common topic that students will write in their college essays, using their unique personal experience and/or life-changing lessons that they learned.

Students Currently in College

  1. The CARES Act provides additional funding to colleges to be used as emergency financial aid for students with most demonstrated needs. The aid will be automatically deposited into the student accounts. Check with your college if you have not yet received any aid.
  2. Some colleges are pledging to freeze tuition and make additional accommodations for students on their transfer credits. Others are granting students more time to make payments and waive late fees.
  3. Colleges are sending refund payments to students who cannot fulfill their work-study obligation due to college closing.
  4. Students who are age 17 or older, and listed as dependents on their parents’ tax return, will not qualify for the stimulus payments, even if their parents and younger sibling(s) will receive payments. Students graduating in 2020, will have another opportunity to qualify for the stimulus payments, if they file a 2020 tax return, not as dependents, in 2021.

College Graduates with Student Loans/Debt

  1. Repayments on all Federal owned student loans, taken out by students or their parents, have been suspended from 3/13/20 to 9/30/20. Interest is also waived during the same time period. This suspension is automatic. Students who have set up auto-debit, will be refunded any payments that should not be made. Students are allowed to make voluntary payments and payments will all be applied towards principal. This does not apply to loans owned by private lenders or colleges. Students may change their non-government owned loans to government owned by consolidating them into a direct loan. However, the benefit period only begins from their new loan’s starting date. Borrowers will lose all benefits in their old loans and their payment period could be reset.
  2. Borrowers whose loans are not owned by the government, can still approach their lenders to seek accommodations. You can learn about your loan servicers by reviewing your entire loan position on studentaid.gov, under “my aid”, using your FASID or call 1-800-433-3243.
  3. If borrowers anticipate issues in re-paying their student loan post 9/30/20, they can switch to another payment plan, offering a more affordable monthly payment amount or apply for deferment or forbearance.
  4. For borrowers in default, this temporary suspension will not put them in a worse situation. Also, their tax refund will not be garnished during this suspension period.
  5. Borrowers seeking forgiveness under the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan and Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), will receive credit for the non-payment time period towards their forgiveness programs.
  6. NYS has temporarily suspended student and medical debts owed to the State as well as suspending mortgage payment for individuals losing their jobs.
  7. For borrowers who have not yet filed their 2019 tax return and narrowly missed the stimulus payment threshold, they may consider using pre-tax dollars to pay for their 2019 retirement contributions. For those who have already filed, they can still make 2019 contributions since the due date for IRA and HSA have been moved to 7/15/20 by filing amended returns. Others can make SEP (due 10/15/20) and DB (due 9/15/20) payments with valid extensions.

** Information provided is subjected to updates as events are evolving daily.