Students can now complete their Perkins Loan Entrance Counseling session online on Mapping Your Future (MYF). Created with the help of students and financial aid professionals, Perkins Online Student Loan Counseling enables participants to meet the counseling requirement anytime, anywhere.

MYF developed Perkins Loan Entrance Counseling at the request of schools who wanted to offer this service online as a convenience to their students. The Federal Perkins Loan Program provides long-term, low-interest loans to students with exceptional financial need. Under the program, loans are made through a school's financial aid office. The school acts as the lender, and the loan is made with federal and school funds.

More than a thousand schools from around the country participate in MYF's Online Student Loan Counseling for Stafford Loans. Through MYF, schools have been able to offer online Stafford Loan Entrance Counseling since 1997 and Stafford Loan Exit Counseling since 1998.

The federal government requires students to complete a Perkins Loan Entrance Counseling session prior to obtaining their first Perkins loan. The purpose of the session is to help students understand the rights and obligations of a student loan borrower. This Perkins Loan Entrance Counseling session prepares students for proper management of the student loan, helping them make the most of their higher education.

Participation Details
Schools wishing to offer MYF's online Perkins Loan Entrance Counseling to their students should complete the online Request for Participation form at http://mapping-your-future.org/perkins/entrancecounseling/sch.cfm. The sign-up process usually takes less than a day but does require the school to respond to MYF to confirm that the information on the form is correct.

MYF currently offers Perkins Loan Counseling as a separate service from Stafford Loan Counseling because, at many college campuses, these loan programs are managed by separate offices. Although the procedures for retrieving reports from an MYF Financial Aid Office Access area are similar to Stafford Loan Counseling, schools will use a different user name and password to access Perkins student loan counseling confirmations.

Perkins Loan Exit Counseling is currently under development but a date for availability has not been determined. More information about Perkins Loan Exit Counseling will be released later.

Questions
For more information about Perkins Loan Entrance Counseling, visit MYF at http://mapping-your-future.org/perkins/entrancecounseling. For questions, or if you are interested in assisting in the development of Perkins Loan Exit Counseling, send a message to Cathy Mueller at cathy.mueller@mapping-your-future.org or call (800) 252-9743, ext. 4539.