(NerdWallet) – Attending graduate school can enhance your career opportunities and increase your potential earnings — but it often comes with a hefty financial burden. According to a 2023 report by the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly 50% of graduate students incur loans, with the average debt amounting to $77,300.
This debt can be challenging to handle as it accumulates quickly. All graduate school loans, whether federal or private, gather interest while you’re still attending school, notes Brittany Brinckerhoff, a certified financial planner and certified student loan expert based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Moreover, you have limited repayment options compared to those available for federal undergraduate loans, explains Brinckerhoff, who has experience assisting lawyers and medical professionals in repaying substantial amounts in graduate school debt.
If graduate school loans are holding you back from achieving your financial goals, consider these expert-approved strategies.
Understand your debt — and your full financial picture
The first step is understanding your debt. Your loan type can determine what repayment plans are available, says Glenn Sanger-Hodgson, a Tallahassee, Florida-based accredited financial planner and certified student loan professional who specializes in medical school debt.
Log into your StudentAid.gov account for federal loan details, including balance, loan type, interest rate and repayment plans. The Education Department’s loan simulator can help you understand federal repayment options. For private loans, check your loan documents or contact your lender.
Once you understand your debt and repayment options, it’s time to choose a path forward. Use the rules of thumb below as a starting point. But also run the numbers on all available repayment plans to find the one that best fits your financial goals and career plans, Sanger-Hodgson says.
If your debt is double your income, consider forgiveness
If your student debt is about twice as much as your income, you’re a good candidate for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) or income-driven repayment (IDR) forgiveness, Sanger-Hodgson says. Consider the full list of student loan forgiveness programs.
Forgiveness is usually time-based. For example, you can get forgiveness after 10 years of payments while working a public service job, or after 20 to 25 years of payments on an IDR plan.
So if you aim for forgiveness, choose the repayment plan with the smallest monthly payment. That way you maximize the amount of debt forgiven when you reach the finish line.
For most borrowers, that means signing up for an IDR plan. The IDR plan called Income-Based Repayment (IBR) is the only IDR plan that’s not going away in 2028 as a result of the recent budget reconciliation bill.
“Your goal needs to be paying as little as possible over the life of the loan,” Sanger-Hodgson says. If you put extra money toward your debt while on a forgiveness path, “you’re just throwing money away that would have been forgiven otherwise.”
If your debt is equal to or less than your income, aggressively pay it off
If your student debt is roughly equal to or less than your income, you’re less likely to benefit from a forgiveness program. With an IDR plan, you could end up paying off your debt in full before achieving forgiveness.
Instead, assuming you’re on track for other financial goals, try “aggressively throwing every financial resource [you] have at getting those student loans paid off as quickly as possible,” Sanger-Hodgson says.
Consider a few key strategies to pay off grad school debt quickly:
- Stick to the standard 10-year repayment plan for federal student loans.
- Make additional lump-sum payments. If you have federal student loans, call your servicer and ask if you can apply extra payments toward the principal, rather than interest. And if you have multiple student loans, tackle the ones with a higher interest rate first.
- Refinance, if you qualify for a lower interest rate.
Carefully consider the decision to refinance if you have federal student loans. They will be replaced with private loans, and you’ll permanently exit the federal student loan system. That means forfeiting access to income-driven repayment plans, forgiveness and other relief.
If you refinance, “you’ve got to be 110% certain that you’re gonna be paying off your loans in full and that you’re not going to need forgiveness at any point,” Sanger-Hodgson says.
Stay informed about your student loans
Government policies, including the recent budget reconciliation bill, are poised to reshape student loans repayment and forgiveness options. Keep an eye on the news and official Education Department announcements.
“There are tremendous changes on the horizon for student loans,” Sanger-Hodgson says.
