I applied for consolidation in May and I am just wondering if its normal to not have it done yet. I have received 2 letters saying they were finding all the loans and that my application went through before the July deadline. One concern I had was them getting all the loans. All the info I have on the loans is on CRs, so of course I dont have account#s or anything ( I assume its under social). Fortunately all the loans but 1 were with the same company I am consolidating with. Other was Direct.

Here I am getting ready to be billed for my September bill. Seems to take a long time, but I guess as long as they get it all done and at the lower rate, it will be cool.

Go out to NSLDS and see the status of your loans and who your lenders are/were.
Any consolidation will have your old loans marked pd with a zero balance or pd thru consolidation.

I had a good friend tell me today that 'all my loans didn't get consolidated'. Turns out that he listed his lenders as Key Bank which they were originally, but they were sold in the secondary market to some obscure lender I'd never heard of out of California.

I told him to check his paperwork to see when the consolidation was approved. There is a 'whoops' clause in consolidation that you can add loans up to 90 days after your consolidation is final. For him the deadline is in about 2 weeks.

Thanks, can you tell me what the NSLDS website is? Only website I have ever used for loans is Citibank, where all but 1 loan ( just plain old Ford Direct) is through.

It's the National Student Loan Database. All of your federally guaranteed loans are listed there, along with the lender and the current holder. There's a link to it in the "Important Links" sticky at the top of this forum. You'll also need a PIN from DOE (the link to get that is there, too). You can register for a PIN online now and they'll e-mail it to you. With the PIN and your SS#, you'll be able to log in to NSLDS and that can tell you where all of your loans are.

Hope this helps!! Good luck!!

Call the lender and check your status. I applied for consolidation end of May, it was processed early June, and I have alrueady made July and August payments. I don't think it is supposed to take that long, even with the rush to consolidate before July 1. My grace period ended in June so by applying in May I never even had to make a payment on the original loan.

Mine went through too. Lender is Nelnet and it only took about 3 weeks from the time I applied.

Thanks for those sites, but it actually didnt tell me anything that I didnt already know. I have my PIn already because its the same PIn as for filling out the FAFSA. I checked and it just says the amounts, when and where disbursed. etc. Under lender it says No Lender, No Servicer,etc. Its a William Ford Direct Loan straight through the Dept of Ed. Whats stupid is Citibank has all the loans except for that 1 so they shouldnt have any hard time finding them. I did Citibank because I already have them and also the discounts they offer on the rates seemed better than going somewhere else for at best the same deal. Oh well. If they charge me a Sept payment and nothing has changed then I will try to contact them.

Did you take out alternative student loans thru CitiAssist? Or do you know if they were federal student loans thru Citi and a guarrantor such as SallieMae?

Your loans would list your lender, the amount originally guaranteed, the amount disbursed and the balance would be "0" if they were pd thru consolidation.

If your Citi loans are not there, I would suspect they are private/alt loans and not eligible for consolidation.

No, they are ALL Stafford Loans. The first 2 were through Willaim Ford Direct through the Dept of Ed. BAck then I didnt pick a lender,they didnt offer a choice, I just did direct. All the Citibank are Stafford loans, too. Now when you do Stafford, they have a list of recommended lenders and Citi was one. I used them the first time was allowed to choose and have picked them each time since then. The Citi Consolidation was an offer sent I'm sure since I already had Stafford loans through them. I have gotten a letter every month since June saying "Thank you for applying for consolidation. We are still working on locating your loans. You applied prior to july 1st, so you will get the lower interest rate." All the Citbank come up listed as Serviced by Student loan Corp, Bank: Citibank, Guarantor Agency ( dont remember what it said there). The 2 Direct Loans have no servicer, bank, or guarantor. From what I understand the loans were just through the Dept of Ed and however they handled that prior to giving loan choice. Every 6 monthsd or so I get a mailing from William D. Ford Direct loans listing the current int rates but no info about my loans. No, they have definitely not been consolidated yet, as they all show blances and I am paying the interest through studentloans dot com.

If I wasnt clear, these were all Stafford Loans, most subsidized. When I was finally allowed to be Independent I took a couple small unsubsidized. I pay the interest on those.

I am sure now its just an issue with Citibank and me communicating with them and probably not anything else I can findout or learn here, but i thank you all for giving me those sites and the other help.