A Borrower Defense to Repayment (BD) application is a form you can fill out to let the Department of Education know that you have been cheated, lied to, or misled by your school, and that you are requesting to have your federal student loans canceled. 

Please be aware of any scam emails or phone calls you may receive related to applying for borrower defense! Submitting a BD application is free and you should always apply directly to the Department of Education. 

You can go to the Department of Education’s website for information on how to apply. You can apply in two ways: 

THROUGH THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PORTAL: https://studentaid.gov/borrower-defense/login 

BY MAIL: 

U.S. Department of Education – Borrower Defense to Repayment 

P.O. Box 1854 

Monticello, KY 42633 

If you have any supporting documents or paperwork, you should include them with your application.

Anyone with federal student loans who believes they were defrauded by their school can apply. You can even apply if you’re still enrolled at your school (although any further loans you take out for that school after your application date won’t be included under your application). 

“Federal student loans” include Direct loans, Direct Consolidation loans, Parent PLUS loans, Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL loans), and FFEL Consolidation loans. You should be able to see your loan types in your servicer’s online portal or in your FSA account. 

If you have already paid off your federal student loans from the school that misled you, then your BD application will not be accepted. You must have at least one outstanding loan from that school in order to apply for BD. 

If you only have private loans (including private consolidation loans with lenders such as SoFi, Earnest, or CommonBond), then you cannot apply for BD through the Department of Education. Some private lenders have their own BD processes – please see our Private Loans page for more info. 

That’s okay! You should still apply. In your application, write about your experiences with the school in as much detail as you can recall.  

If you need help filling out a BD application, you can find the Department of Education’s official guide and requirements for applying for BD here.  

If you need additional guidance with applying for BD, you can also consult the New York Legal Assistance Group’s guide here.  

PPSL is not able to assist with individual borrower defense applications.  

No – you have the option to select an administrative forbearance while your BD application is pending. When you submit your application, you can check a box to request forbearance.  

If you have already applied and want to request forbearance now, contact your loan servicer and tell them that you want to be in a borrower defense administrative forbearance. 

Please be aware, however, that any time you spend in BD forbearance will not count as months in repayment toward cancellation under income-driven repayment plans or Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).  

Also, interest will accrue on your loans during BD forbearance. If your application is approved, that interest will be cancelled, but if your application is denied, you will have to repay it.

Whether to request a BD forbearance or remain in a repayment plan is a personal decision that depends on your specific circumstances. PPSL is not able to advise individual borrowers on whether to request a forbearance. 

Unfortunately, we don’t know. The Department currently has a backlog of over 200,000 BD applications, and there are no rules in place that require them to make decisions within any particular timeline. Right now, there is nothing that a borrower can do to speed up the decision process. 

This is complicated! 

Over the years, the Department has revised its rules for deciding BD applications several times, and some of those rules have been altered by court decisions and legislation. Below is a chart to give you a general idea about which rules will apply to your application. The standards for decision are described in more detail in the linked regulations.

* IMPORTANT: If you originally took out your loans before July 1, 2020, but you later consolidated those loans into a Direct Consolidation loan on or after July 1, 2020, then the Department’s current policy is to decide your application under the 2019 Regulations. As a result, your application might be denied based on the time limit to apply under the 2019 Regulations. PPSL is investigating this policy. 

If you are unsure if you already have an application pending or if you would like to know the status of your application, you can call the Department of Education’s borrower defense hotline at 855-279-6207 (open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET Monday through Friday). Each application should have a claim number associated with it. 

You should be able to add further evidence to your BD application through whichever method you used to apply: If you applied online, through your FSA portal; or if you applied by mail, by sending your additional evidence to the same address listed above.  

If you encounter problems with updating your application in the FSA portal, we suggest contacting the BD hotline at 855-279-6207 and/or submitting a complaint to the FSA Ombudsman’s office. 

If you send additional materials by mail, make sure to include a reference to your BD application number with those materials. If you didn’t receive a BD application number after submitting by mail, we suggest that you call the BD hotline at 855-279-6207 to ask for your number. 

There is no deadline to apply for borrower defense. There were certain deadlines to be a class member in the Sweet v. McMahon (formerly Sweet v. Cardona) case. More information about that case can be found here. But you do not have to be a member of the Sweet class to apply for BD!