She'll need to file with FAFSA to get started. It's an annoyingly long process sitting in front of the computer, but it's pretty easy when you stop to think about how complicated it could have been without the interweb. The deadlines for each school year are surprisingly early, so get a head start on things now so that you're not left in the lurch. I think you need to be signed up and choose your lender (another dizzying process) and accept the loan well before the semester starts--usually the deadline is in the early summer for the following school year if I'm not mistaken.
Start here
http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/ and I'm sure there's someone at her school that can be of more assistance than we can...
just a quick note on a part of this, the only real federal deadline for FAFSA is that the loan has to be certified within the loan period, i.e. the fall loan period for a student at my institution is 09/02/08-12/19/08
so if a student wanted a federal loan for just the fall, we would need to have the fafsa in our office at least 5 days before the end of the loan period. But i would never advise you to wait this long, the earlier you do it the better.
Any institution should be offering you the federal loans before they turn you down the path to "alternative/private" loans. If they do not you can report them to your attorney general.
Nursing is considered Title VII aid and has different regulations, i deal with title IV aid so cannot go into detail for you. I believe the borrowing limits are larger for your wife so that they would have to borrow less alternative loans.
The Graduate Plus loan will be another option after your federal Stafford Loans. Plus loans are a hybrid alternative loan and federal loan. the federal part is that it has a fixed interest rate made by the government 8.5% FFEL or 7.9% DL and has a 10yr repayment term like the Stafford loans. However, unlike the Stafford loans it does not come with a 6month grace period (this differs between direct lending and FFEL because FFEL lenders will grant you a defferement if a written request is made. FFEL stands for Federal Family Education Loan Program which just means the Stafford loans and Plus loans are done through banks and not directly from the gov't).
The part that is like the alternative loans is that it is a credit based loan. Most alternative loans look at your full credit, i.e. credit score/debt to income ratio/ and history, the plus loan is a little less stringent, they want you to pass a credit review that must not have adverse credit, defined as:
A current 90-day delinquency, Debt discharged in bankruptcy during the past five years
Evidence of a default, foreclosure, tax lien, repossession, wage garnishment, or write-off of a Title IV debt during the past five years
payment on this type of loan will begin after the last disbursement is made on the loan or when you finish your program or cease to enroll for halftime or more.
Some students still prefer to go with alternative loans because they feel that the interest rates based on prime will average out over the time that you pay back you loan to under the 7.9-8.5% that the plus loan is charging. That is something you yourself would have to weight out.
sorry for the long post not an easy topic to sum up.
Self-improvement is the only way we can get ahead.
Easy too, from what I heard.
