The Chapter Exit Counseling Skips: A Note for Financial Aid Offices
February 28, 2026 Mark McGinnis
Anyone who has run exit counseling knows the script: repayment plans, servicer contacts, budgeting basics, sign here. It is a good script. It is also almost entirely a federal script, for a defensible reason: federal programs exist, so we can teach them.
Which leaves a gap. Private loans have no federal income-driven repayment, no federal forgiveness, and no federal rehabilitation. When our materials go quiet there, students hear silence at exactly the point where they will later need a map.
The result is predictable. Alumni who hit trouble on a private loan, and the cosigning parent attached to nearly every undergraduate private loan, learn the vocabulary of default from a collection letter. They search at night, find federal advice that does not apply, and conclude that nothing does.
Three things any office can do without a budget line.
Name the difference in one slide. Private loans have no federal safety net. If you struggle, contact the lender early, ask what hardship programs exist, and know that options like negotiation and specialized refinancing may exist even after default.
Give families the cosigner talk before the signature, not after. A cosigner is a co-borrower, equally responsible, with their own credit exposed. Most families do not fully know this, and the moment they are most able to hear it is at the point of borrowing.
Have a referral path for the alumni who will inevitably contact you anyway. They do call. Know where you would send them: nonprofit credit counseling, legal aid or a consumer attorney for anything involving a lawsuit, and plain-English education written for private loans specifically.
We are building free, brandable handouts for exactly this chapter, including a one-page private loan explainer and a cosigner sheet you can hand to families. They are free, they carry your logo if you want them to, and they do not pitch anything to students.
They are at gradmerge.com/schools, along with our webinar series for aid and bursar professionals.
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