Tony Sozzo, the associate dean for student financial planning at New York Medical College, recently asked his colleagues, "If you were never a Direct Loan school and never made a Direct Loan, have you begun or completed the process of becoming a Direct Loan school to prepare for next year?"

Sozzo is the System Operator for MEDAID-L, a listserv for financial aid administrators at graduate health professions schools or working with other health professions programs. MEDAID-L has members from health professions schools, the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, the lending community, and other financial aid related organizations. This open network is designed to address issues and concerns of the health professions financial aid community.It is hosted by the Office of Student Financial Planning at New York Medical College.

In response to the question, Sozzo received 29 responses from his colleagues. Most indicated that they are beginning the process or plan to begin the process soon. The following are the answers he received, in no particular order. These answers have been reposted with Mr. Sozzo's permission.

• The university is making their decision this month and I will probably go the way they do as well. No sense in being left behind. Kind of resigned to the fact that we have to switch.

• Yes & have processed one loan.

• No (ugh) -- hope to start as soon as the auditors (double ugh) leave ...

• We have begun discussion, but have not started the process of getting set up with the DL program. I would like to get that started now while I am in my single slower month, but those above me are worried that politicians making the decisions will use the number of schools making the transition to the DL program as fodder for political debate. Our IT people are not willing to invest much time in changing our system until legislation is final. This timeframe is making me very uncomfortable.

• We have never been a DL school but yes, we (University-wide) have started meeting, discussing and preparing for the transition.

• YES, we have begun the process.

• We have never made a DL, but we have a meeting scheduled for the 20th to begin the application process.

• We have always been FFELP. For the last couple of months we've been "talking" about the switch to DL and had hoped to get started before now but have been overwhelmed with other office issues. Given the recent "urging" from the ED, we've printed out the resources and are planning to start moving with it next week. It was my original intention to be ahead of the curve on this switch but other circumstances prevented us from moving ahead so now we are going to be stuck in with the giant herd of schools jumping on the DL bandwagon. So much for good intentions!

• Our institution is undecided about using DL. However we are taking steps in preparation.

• Yes, we are all signed up for the process. We understand it does not obligate us to anything, but felt it was necessary to have all of our ducks in a row just in case.

• Yes, we have begun the process to go DL for next year. We're only past the approval stage and participating in Direct Loan webinars to determine an implementation strategy.

• Yes we have begun the process but have serious concerns about the mechanics of operating the program with a branch code and only one TG number. The fun never ends.

• Yes, we have started the process in anticipation of a 2010 mandate.

• We have begun the process.

• We have been approved to do Direct Loans, but have not submitted any loans to the feds yet. Due to the difference in interest rate, we were planning to do our Grad Plus Loans through DL and our Staffords through FFELP. However, we are currently holding off on the Grad Plus DL, because if the whole campus goes DL, the process for doing the loans will be much different than the process we would use for the limited number of Grad Plus Loans we certify each year.

• I never thought I would go this route, but [we are] switching to Direct Lending in the 2010/11 year, regardless of whether it is required or not comes to pass. We just didn't want to be the last school in line of the 4000 that will need to transition to DL. We have had someone come and provide some computer training for us, and three of my staff will be attending the Direct Lending Conference in Nashville at the end of November.

• We are in the process of updating our PPA and other various reporting to add DL. That's all we've done so far and it's not complete yet.

• No, we have not begun the process.

• I am not a DL school and have not started the process but plan to soon.

• We haven't yet begun the conversion process. It's under discussion, of course.

• starting to make the conversion

• We are beginning to look at it. Have questions about the best way to set up, as we are a branch campus of the University. As such, we do most processes independently, however main campus reports to COD for us. Spoke with someone at DL a couple of months ago, who assured me that there is sufficient flexibility for setup. We have a couple of complications -- one being that we are a header and main campus is a trailer. I believe the person I spoke with is [XXXXX XXXXX]. I have her phone number, but not an e-mail address. She told me to call as soon as we were ready to begin, but I called last week and she is out until the 19th. Have had difficulty finding information on the DL website that really provides guidance to help schools with branch campuses make the decision on how to process.

• My university is in the process of converting to DL for 2009-2010. We are a header school so our first DL loans will be disbursed in the summer. Our conversion date is March 1, 2010.

• We are not DL. However, the university's main campus FAO changed to DL for this academic year. No, I have not begun any process for moving to DL.

• We have never been a DL school. I learned today that we have applied to participate in DL. Until you certify your first loan, you are not a DL school. By applying to participate, you start to receive DL information from the Department, which is helpful. You might want to consider submitting the application now. If there is a 2 year phase in of DL for all schools, my school made the decision to be a year 1 school because year 2 is too close to our conversion from quarters to semesters.

• We have done some preliminary work on set up. We have checked our ECAR first to see that we have been assigned a number, which we have. We are working with SUNGUARD to begin testing the DL piece in Banner. We are internally planning reporting requirements and who will be responsible. Hope this helps.

• The University is converting to PeopleSoft for 2010-2011. Due to the whole complex situation with FFELP/Direct Loans and the conversion, the decision was made to go to Direct Loans. I know the programmers are preparing for that. Since the details are handled by "main campus," I don't know more than that at this point without asking.

• We were never a DL School. We have begun the process and we have listed the DL possibility on our E-Cert. That's about all be have done.

• In spring when I had to complete my Participation in Title IV application, I added Direct Loans so that we would receive approval in case we had to go Direct Lending. My staff and I have viewed three of the six webinars so far on participating in Direct Lending. Our IT people will be with us for the Systems webinar on October 20th and our Business Office will be viewing those webinars in December. One of my staff and I will be attending the FSA Conference in Nashville in December and I will ask to obtain my id and password to view COD before the conference. Once I get back, we will begin the process to add Direct Lending.

Posted 10/15/09 to www.NASFAA.org. Redistribution to non-NASFAA institutions is prohibited. Please submit Web site questions or comments to Web@NASFAA.org.