To receive a student loan you must file a FAFSA for the appropriate aid year, accept your loan offer on your financial aid award on the student portal, complete Loan Entrance Counseling at Home | Federal Student Aid if you are a first time student loan borrower, and finally complete a Master Promissory Note (MPN) at Home | Federal Student Aid using your FSA ID to log in. You must be enrolled and attending at least half-time (6 credit hours) to receive a loan disbursement.   Loan Entrance Counseling is an online course that informs you of your loan options and repayment requirements.

Please contact Dianne Chan at Dianne.Chan@pikespeak.edu or 719-502-2299 if you have any questions about completing the online loan counseling session. 

Current interest rates on loans disbursed between July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022 are:

• Direct Subsidized Loans (undergraduate students) – 5.50% fixed
• Direct Unsubsidized Loans (undergraduate students) – 5.50% fixed
• Direct PLUS Loans  (parents) – 8.05% fixed 

Please Note: interest rates generally increase or decrease every July 1.

Student loans can have a much lower interest rate than private loans and sometimes the interest is deferred while students are in school. Keep in mind that any money you borrow needs to be repaid. PPSC is a participant in the Federal Direct Loan Program in which students borrow Stafford Loan funds directly from the U.S. Department of Education rather than from a lender.

As a loan recipient, you can expect a few things to happen after graduation, dropping below half-time enrollment, leaving PPSC, or transferring to a new institution:

• You will be required to complete Loan Exit Counseling to learn about repayment and deferment information regarding loans you've borrowed
• You may receive communication from your servicer indicating a change of enrollment and expectations of payment
• You may receive a 6-month grace period of non-payment before your servicer requires monthly repayment of any loans you've borrowed

You will want to work out payment options with your servicer, but below is a sample loan repayment plan to give you an idea of what to expect:

A Cohort Default Rate (CDR) is the percentage of a school’s borrowers who enter repayment on student loans during a federal fiscal year (October 1 to September 30) and default prior to the end of the next two federal fiscal years (3-Year CDR). The United States Department of Education releases official cohort default rates once per year for schools participating in the Title IV student financial assistance programs.    

A college’s Cohort Default Rate (CDR) measures the percentage of their federal student loan borrowers who defaulted on their student loans within a specified period of time after entering repayment. Colleges with high CDR rates are subject to lose future eligibility for federal Title IV aid, to include Pell grants and federal Subsidized and Unsubsidized student loans.

*3YR Official CDR rate for FY2019 is the most recent rate provided by the Department of Education. These are borrowers who entered repayment of their student loans between Oct. 1, 2018 and Sept. 30, 2019 and subsequently defaulted prior to Sept. 30, 2021. Here at Pikes Peak State College, the official rate is 3.1%. This includes 2,489 borrowers in repayment during the 2019 fiscal year. Those students were tracked over a three-year period and 78 of them defaulted on their student loans. (With the pause of student loan repayments, there is a nationwide decrease in the 3-year CDR since borrowers are not required to make payment.) For reference, the national 3YR Official CDR rate fell to 2.3% from 7.3%.