How to Apply for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program
Published on June 25, 2022
Updated on March 25, 2026
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I just want to start off by saying I am still optimistic that some sort of broad student loan forgiveness is in our future.
Some would say I am naïve… and rightly so. For now, I am working towards the already implemented student loan forgiveness program called the Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).
In this post, I hope to briefly outline what is PSLF, who qualifies, and show you step by step how you can apply for the program.
What is Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF)?
If you work for a qualified agency, after paying on your loans for 120 months (10 years), the rest of your loan will be forgiven.
What jobs qualify for PSLF?: A qualified agency would include not-for-profit agencies and U.S. government agencies (state local, federal, and tribal).
You have to work full-time at this agency and also be repaying your loans under an income-driven repayment plan.
For your application to be completed, there is a form you have to get your employer to sign to certify you worked there. I will go into more details about that later in this post.
Information you should know about your student loans
First, I would recommend you know the answer to these five questions:
- Who is your loan servicer? (to find out, click here)
- What type of loan do you have? (e.g. federal, private, direct subsidized or unsubsidized, etc.)
- How much do you owe?
- What are your interest rates?
- What repayment program are you currently in? (e.g. standard repayment, income-based, graduated repayment)
On to how to apply for the program!
Completing the PSLF help tool
There is a handy PSLF tool to tell you if your employer qualifies and the next steps to take to apply.
Click here to get started. Your page should look like this:
Next, you need to login into your federal student aid account and it will bring you to this page:
At the bottom, it recommends for you to complete this every year to keep your progress towards forgiveness up to date.
Once you click continue, it will bring you to the page titled: “My Employers”.
Add your employer:
Add in all of your past and current employers.
If you type your employer’s EIN number and they are showing as “not eligible,” then this agency is not a qualified employer.
- To add an employer, click “add an employer” at the bottom of the page
- You will need the Employer Identification Number and your start and end date. You can find the EIN on your W-2 form
- Once you add in your employers, there will be questions asking you if you were part-time or full-time, how many hours you worked, and if your employer has closed and/or is refusing to certify your employment.
How to actually apply for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program
From here, you will answer the questions that best fit your situation and fill in demographic information.
It’s pretty straightforward.
When you are done, you will be brought to a page with this notification:
It is important to know that just completing up to this step is NOT applying for PSLF.
This tool helps you fill out the required application form with your employer’s information.
You will then need to send this form to your past or current employer(s) to obtain an authorized signature verifying you worked there during the period of time you are reporting.
Then, when you are done with obtaining the necessary signatures, you can submit the form to the US department of education.
Where to send the PSLF form
Only those who have their loans serviced by FedLoan can use the secure upload option – everyone else will need to mail the application form or fax it.
Additional information about applying to the PSLF program
You will see this additional information that you may need to consider when applying.
- Loan consolidation: if you have certain types of loans, you might have to consolidate. Learn more about consolidation here.
- Repayment plan: you have to be paying in an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan to qualify for PSLF. Click here to learn more about IDR plans.
- Loan default: Your loans cannot be in default to qualify for PSLF. Learn more about how to handle your defaulted loans here.
When I applied a few years back, I had to consolidate my loans AND change my repayment plan.
The application for both of those scenarios is free and I was able to complete them online.
Loan simulator tool
If you are curious about what your payments would be in different types of payment plans, I would recommend using this loan simulator tool.
You can also see if you should consolidate, how to lower your payment, and more.
I used it specifically to see how much they would estimate I would get forgiven if I applied to the PSLF program.
My progress towards PSLF and confronting our student loan total
I currently have a whopping total of $126,543.19 in student loans ($27,448.67 is eligible for this program).
My servicer, for now, is FedLoan and they have a nifty payment tracker to tell me how close I am to forgiveness (not very close).
I think I read somewhere that most servicers are hoping to have something similar like this on their platforms in the future. Fingers crossed!
I have been trying my best since graduating college to take the best steps for repayment and forgiveness.
But frankly, it’s been hard and frustrating.
Bret and I recently printed out all of our student loans (ours & our parents) to take a good look at what we owe and interest rates.
It really helped to take a long hard look at it all.
While we are holding onto hope of some form of forgiveness from Biden, we know it will not be completely wiped out and we will be responsible for the rest.
We do not want to always be paying on our student loans, so we are trying to make plans to pay them down as best and quickly as we can.
Retiring early is the plan and student loans are not conducive to that plan!
Related Post: Simple Retire Early Calculator
Our plan is to pay down the loans using the avalanche method (paying down the loans with the highest interest rates).
We have a total of $260,390.25 between the both of us.
Sharing that number is scary and daunting, but I want to be transparent and normalize the struggle!
The struggle is real, y’all.
I’ll share updates periodically on our progress – wish us luck!
Final Thoughts
If you still have questions about how to apply for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program feel free to email me at taylor@socialworktowealth.com or check out the Student Aid.gov FAQ by clicking here.
I think anyone who is eligible should be taking advantage so let me help you or find someone who can!
Also, if you have applied and have been denied, but think you should qualify. Click here to learn more about requesting a reconsideration.
There have been lots of critiques about this process and some people have made their 120 payments, and yet still have not had their loans forgiven.
With the current magnifying glass on student loans and the predatory system, it seems to me they are trying to take actual steps to rectify the situation and make sure this doesn’t keep happening to others.
I do personally know someone who recently got $60,000 forgiven through the PSLF program. It’s possible!
I know the student loan system as a whole is awful… but that’s a conversation for another day…
