But that actually may be one good thing to come out of the scandal. The advice about deciding whether and with whom to consolidate hasn’t changed. It’s just become even more relevant.

“The current scandal reinforces the need to be a savvy consumer and examine carefully any offer you receive no matter where it comes from,” said Lauren Asher, associate director of Project Student Debt and the Institute for College Access and Success.

Indeed, says publisher of StudentDebtsRelief.com, “even when a school’s preferred lender list is unbiased, you still have to identify which loans are best for you.”

The question of whether to consolidate your federal loans depends on the type of loans you have, their rate (variable or fixed) and your goal: Do you want to reduce the interest you pay long-term? Lower your monthly payment? Pay just one bill instead of several? Get better discounts?

It also depends on whether you’ve already consolidated the loans in question before. By law, you may not consolidate the same loans twice.

Here’s what to consider if you have:

Stafford Loans

If your Stafford loans were issued before July 1, 2006 they are variable-rate loans.

What determines the change in the variable rate every July is the yield on the 3-month Treasury bill during the last T-bill auction in May. Currently, the yield is very close to where it was a year ago. So if the 3-month yield doesn’t move much between now and the end of the month, payments on your Stafford loans are not likely to go up much, if at all, after July 1.

So there’s little reason to consolidate if your sole goal is to lock in a lower rate this year.

But there is one exception: if you’re still in your so-called grace period, defined as up to six months after your graduation. That’s because you still are enjoying the “in-school” rate, which is about 0.6 percentage points less than it will be when your grace period ends and you go into repayment.

Consolidating before your grace period ends lets you to lock in that lower rate. Technically, you may lose out on some of your grace period because you will need to begin repayment within 60 days of consolidating.

But if you apply for consolidation before July 1, a lot of lenders can set it up so that the clock on that 60 days doesn’t start until close to the last two months of your grace period, Richard said.

There’s also little reason to consolidate if you want to lock in a lower rate and you got your Stafford loan after July 1, 2006. That’s because those loans are fixed rate loans at 6.8 percent and won’t change.

Whether you have variable or fixed rate Staffords, however, you might consider consolidating if you want to reduce your monthly payments. You can do so by combining your loans into one loan and extending the repayment term.

But by doing so you greatly increase the amount of interest you’ll pay. By changing your repayment term from 10 years to 20, you’ll cut your monthly payment by a third, but you’ll double the amount of interest you pay long-term, Richard said.

A 30-year term is even more expensive. Say you have $20,000 in fixed-rate Stafford loans. Asher notes that you’ll pay $7,619 in interest on them over 10 years. But if you consolidate and extend the repayment term to 30 years, you’ll lower your monthly payment by $100 but you’ll end up paying $26,935 in interest.

Besides rates and monthly payments, weigh discount incentives when considering consolidation. Many lenders offer breaks if, say, you direct debit your payments or pay on-time for 36 consecutive months.

Compare not only consolidation discounts offered by different lenders, compare them to the discounts you’re currently enjoying.

Sometimes, Richard said, “discounts for consolidated loans are inferior to those on unconsolidated loans.”

Well, you get the point, and I’m sure you already know all about it. But since you ended up here, I can see that you’re already on the right track to getting serious student loan debt relief for yourself. If you’ve done any research before this at all, you’ll know by now that there are so many options, this is probably looking a lot harder than you thought it would be.

The best thing you can do is to go straight to a professional. Student loan debt relief is pretty easy to handle by people who have done it before. Don’t waste your time reading books or tons of articles by journalists pumping out filler for a website.

I know it’s a crime and a vicious circle. You have to attend college and receive a higher education and graduate in order to make any money, but by the time that happens you already owe plenty thanks to student loan debt.

How To Get Rid Of Your Student Loans