We offer deferment of up to 36 months for clients who return to an accredited undergraduate or graduate school at least half-time. We currently do not offer deferment for the Peace Corps, fellowships, or other similar programs. In order to be eligible for deferment, your current enrollment status must be half-time or more. For private student loans, please check out this article for program specifics.
Our team may request additional documentation to confirm your enrollment status. Acceptable forms of documentation include:
- An official letter on school letterhead confirming the start and end dates of the program you are enrolled in.
- Verification form from the National Clearing House. (This option may require a small fee).
We require a completed, signed, and dated request form to process a deferment request. The form is available to download at the bottom of this article.
For Earnest clients: You can upload the completed form to your online dashboard using the following directions:
- Sign in to your Earnest account.
- Click “Referrals” from the left-side navigation menu.
- Under Account select “Upload Documents.”
- Drop your file into the box and click "Save Changes" at the bottom. Please note that the maximum file capacity is 10MB.
Since we are not automatically notified when documents are uploaded, we ask that you reach out to notify us by clicking the “Get In Touch” button found at the bottom of this article.
For NaviRefi clients: Please email your document(s) to naviREFI_documents@navient.com. When emailing us a document, please password-protect your document to increase its security. You can do this via Adobe Acrobat, Preview, or other programs. Once you have password-protected the document and emailed it, call the Client Happiness team during business hours at (888) 601-2801 from 5 AM to 5 PM PT, Monday through Friday, excluding holidays, to provide the password to a member of the team. If you have any questions about how to password-protect your document, please feel free to call the Client Happiness team during business hours.
All deferment requests must be received by Earnest at least five (5) business days before the date you are requesting the deferment begins. Requests received on or before the fifth business day prior to a payment due date will be implemented for your current payment. Starting on the fourth business day before, we'll file the request right away, but the change may or may not go into effect for your current payment. If filing the request at that point, please be prepared for the possibility that your auto-payment will be withdrawn or your manual payment will remain due. If you do not hear back from our team within five (5) to eight (8) business days of uploading your completed form, feel free to contact us at 888-601-2801, Monday through Friday, 5 AM to 5 PM PT, excluding holidays.