President Joe Biden Monday officially kicked off the application process for his student loan forgiveness program.
The official launch comes after around 8 million borrowers had already applied for loan relief during the federal government's soft launch period over the weekend.
It takes just a couple of minutes to complete the application, which asks for basic information, including the borrower’s name, Social Security number, contact information, and date of birth.
It does not ask for income documentation but asks users to check a box attesting that they are eligible under the program’s income limits.
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That information will be checked against Education Department records to help identify applicants who are likely to exceed the income limits, the administration says. Those people will be asked for more information to prove their income.
“The government doesn’t ask for something like a W-2 form, so there may be some instances in the future where the government says, ‘hey, we asked you to attest to this, just please upload an additional document to prove you are being honest,” said Jacob Channel, a senior economist with Lending Tree.
In the midst of applying, some borrowers expecting relief are finding out their debt no longer qualifies.
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New guidelines shut out certain borrowers whose federal loans are not held by the Education Department.
These include Federal Family Education Loans and Perkins Loans. Only borrowers who applied to consolidate these loans into the direct loan program prior to Sept. 29 will be eligible. Experts estimate this impacts around 2% of student loan borrowers.
“The reality is the vast majority of student loan borrowers will still qualify for forgiveness, this is unfortunate for some borrowers, but for most people, this isn’t going to have a huge impact on them one way or another,” Channel said.
With so many people hoping for some type of debt relief, the federal government is warning you to be on the lookout for student loan-related scams.
“They were basically saying that I needed to fill out forms now in order to apply for the loan forgiveness,” Sarah James said.
James, the wife of NBC 6 Photojournalist Anthony James, says she received two phone calls from people demanding personal information related to student loan forgiveness. Luckily, she says she didn’t fall for the ploy.
“So when I did call the loan provider, the woman there told me that this is very common right now, that a lot of people are getting duped into scams,” James said.
If the Education Department needs additional information they will email you directly, according to the application site. The site states legitimate emails from the Department of Education will come from the following email addresses:
