You can combine several federal student loans into one through a Direct Loan Consolidation.

There are several benefits to performing a Direct Consolidation:

1. Simplicity: Instead of having multiple loans, bills, and servicers, you have only one. This makes managing repayment much easier and giving you more time to focus on yourself, your family, and your career.

2. Access to IDR plans and PSLF. There are several types of federal loans that are not eligible for IDR plans or PSLF, including Stafford and Perkins loans. When you consolidate these loans, the resulting loan is a Direct Loan. Direct Loans are eligible for income-driven repayment and loan forgiveness.

3. Eliminate the Grace and Automatic Deferment Periods. When you finish medical school, your federal student loans automatically enter a grace or deferment period. During this time, you cannot make payments but interest continues to accrue. You can eliminate the automatic grace and deferment periods through consolidation, which allows you to receive credit for IDR payments sooner and take advantage of interest subsidies available in some IDR plans.

How Direct Loan Consolidation Works

When you perform a Direct Loan Consolidation, your existing loans are combined into one large loan. You don't need to consolidate all of your loans, but most people do when they consolidate.

The balance of your resulting consolidated loan will be the combined total of the loans you consolidate, plus any unpaid interest. The interest rate will be the weighted average of the interest rates of the loans you are consolidating, rounded up to the nearest one-eight of 1%.

Performing a Direct Consolidation is free. You can apply for loan consolidation directly via the Federal Student Loan website. Once you decide to consolidate your loans, it's best to get started as soon as possible because the process takes 30-60 business days. You cannot consolidate when you are in school, though you can begin the process as soon as you graduate from medical school.

Downsides of Student Loan Consolidation

There are downsides to consolidation that may affect some borrowers:

1. You lose the ability to pay off your highest-interest loans first, since all loans are combined into a single loan with one interest rate.

2. You may pay slightly more in interest since the weighted average interest rate of your consolidated loan is rounded up to the nearest one-eight of 1%.

3. If you have already made IDR payments on your loans, you may lose credit for them if you consolidate those loans into a new loan (note: several measures have been taken to count periods of payment made prior to consolidation toward forgiveness, including an IDR Account Adjustment which will count payments made under any plan toward IDR forgiveness, even if loans have been consolidated).