i would get in touch with your school's financial aid office. even if you are no longer a student, but an alumnus, they will often help you. good luck.

I was able to "consolidate" all my government loans both subsidized and subsidized together. Though my subsidized and unsubsized are shown in paperwork as two loans, I only make on payment for them and they both have the same interest rate.

I was NOT, however, able to consolidate my private loans into the mix. I'd definitely check out the website Orochi posted. Student Loans Direct has a good program and I believe you can lock in a good fixed rate. Currently, AES is the servicer of all my loans, as I was able to get a pretty good deal when it came to interest rates and payment plans.

Good luck with everything.

I couldn't consolidate my gate loans with my student loans; in fact, I couldn't consolidate my gate loans at ALL, back in the day when I did it. They are HORRIBLE loans and have variable rates hovering around 8 %, but the worst part is that usually the terms dictate that the first FIVE FULL YEARS are interest-ONLY payments, and you can't pay down your principal at all in those years (even seperate, extra payments only apply towards future interest). This is a horrible rip-off. The best thing you can do with those loans is pay the absolutely minimum every single month, and bank up tons of extra savings to pay them off early in one lump sum, before the 5 years is up. Trust me, you'll come to hate those loans.

Anyway, I've heard you can now consolidate the gate loans together -- but remember, consolidating resets your loan origination date, so you MIGHT get stuck simply extending that first 5 years of interest-only payments on the gate loans. So check ahead and make sure that won't be the case. If it resets the start date of your 1st five years of payment, I probably wouldn't do it. Or at least, you'd have to calculate how much you save on the interest rate reduction versus how much you'll pay extra for those 5 years of profit to the company.

It's my monthly "guaranteed dissapointment."

I had about 50k in unsub/sub federal loans with a payment of about $600/mo. I consolidated last year when interest rates dropped with federal consolidation (mentioned above) and my payments went to $250/mo.

Why 'horrors' ?

Didn't you expect to pay the loan back when you borrowed the money?

Stupid question manta, but does GATE loan = private loan? I've never heard that term before.

It's a private "education" loan that supposedly follows some special program. It's marketed only to students, and directly in partnership with the university. (For example, my actual student aid form the years I got it listed "GATE loan" as part of the "package" they "offered" me.)

I'm by no means an expert and this process will not apply to everyone, but here is the way I did it relatively successfully:

I did not consolidate. I prioritized paying off unsubsidized loans over subsidized first. The unsubsidized were fixed rates at 6.8% and variable were around 4.5% at the time. I completely paid off the unsubsidized in lump sums and had just the subsidized left (with variable rates). The variable rate has been favorable lately and has dropped to 2.48% which is very good. I pay little interest even if I carried the loans full term - IF the interest rates stay that low (it won't). At this point it didn't do me any good to consolidate because all the loans were of the same type anyway and is managed through one source.

I actually have just enough in savings to cover the subsidized loans. But I would be left with very little "Plan B" money if I wanted to be completely debt free. So instead of paying back lump-sum, I'm paying monthly minimums. And with the money that I would have paid lump-sum, I put in stocks - pretty aggressively. It must've been the degenerate gambler in me. Luckily I got the timing right.