Grad PLUS Is Gone: What You Can Borrow for Law, Medical or Graduate School Now

Until July 1, 2026, a graduate or professional student could borrow federal Grad PLUS loans for as much as the school's cost of attendance, less other aid. For new borrowers that option is gone. What replaced it is a set of hard limits on federal borrowing, and for many programs the limits are well below the price. This guide sets out the limits, works four typical programs through them with the same engine as the Student Loan Limits Calculator, and explains the exception for students who were already partway through a program.

The new limits

The Department of Education's final rule of May 1, 2026 (34 CFR 685.200 and 685.203) says that beginning July 1, 2026 a graduate or professional student may not borrow a Direct PLUS Loan. The Direct Unsubsidized Loan stays, with new caps that depend on whether the degree is a "professional" one:

On top of those, a student's lifetime total across all federal loans, undergraduate and graduate, is capped at $257,500 (Parent PLUS loans a student took out as a parent do not count). The Department states that loans a graduate student already took for earlier graduate programs count toward the $100,000or $200,000 total; undergraduate loans count only toward the lifetime cap. Amounts are also reduced in proportion to less-than-full-time enrollment, and a school may set lower limits for a program if it applies them to everyone in it.

Which degrees are "professional"

The rule lists them: pharmacy (Pharm.D.), dentistry (D.D.S. or D.M.D.), veterinary medicine (D.V.M.), chiropractic (D.C. or D.C.M.), law (LL.B. or J.D.), medicine (M.D.), optometry (O.D.), osteopathic medicine (D.O.), podiatry (D.P.M., D.P. or Pod.D.), theology (M.Div. or M.H.L.) and clinical psychology (Psy.D. or Ph.D.). A professional degree also has to be generally doctoral, take at least six academic years of college coursework including two after the bachelor's degree, and generally require a license to practice. Everything else, including nursing, physician assistant, physical therapy, business, public health and most master's and doctoral programs, is a graduate degree with the lower limits. If a program awards both, it counts as professional when more than half its credit hours count toward the professional degree.

Four programs, worked through

• Law: at $95,000 a year the loan covers $50,000 of each year and $45,529 is left, every year. Under the rules that ended in June the same student could have borrowed the full $285,000, $135,000 more than now.
• Medicine: four years at $50,000 is exactly the $200,000 aggregate, so the limit and the program end together, and the gap grows each year because the price does but the cap does not.
• MBA and nursing: both are graduate degrees, so both are capped at $20,500 a year and $41,000 over two years, whether the program costs $45,000 a year or $120,000. For the nursing program that is under half the cost; for the MBA it is less than a fifth.

The exception for students already enrolled

A student who was enrolled in a program on June 30, 2026 and had a Direct Loan made for it before July 1, 2026 keeps the old rules, including Grad PLUS up to the cost of attendance, for the "expected time to credential": the lesser of three academic years or the time left in the program (34 CFR 685.102 and 685.203). The exception ends if the student withdraws or stops being enrolled in that program, and it does not carry over to a different program. The Department says that unsubsidized loans previously borrowed count toward the new $100,000 and $200,000 totals, so borrowing under the exception can use up room in a later year that falls under the new limits. A school's financial aid office decides how the exception applies to an individual student.

What repayment looks like on the federal part

Loans made on or after July 1, 2026 can be repaid only under the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) or the Tiered Standard plan; Income-Based Repayment is not open to them. For the law example, the federal balance when repayment starts is about $180,263 at the 8.07% rate for 2026–27, including interest that builds up in school and the six-month grace period. On $85,000 of income, RAP would be $567 a month and the Tiered Standard plan, which runs 25 years for a balance that size, $1,400 a month. Compare your own numbers with the RAP vs. IBR Calculator.

What fills the gap

The remainder has to come from somewhere: savings, income while studying, scholarships and the school's own aid, or private loans. Private lenders set their own rates and terms, and approval depends on credit; unlike federal loans, private loans have no income-based repayment plan and no federal forgiveness. That is a difference in kind, not just in price, and it is worth weighing before treating a private loan as a replacement for the federal loan that used to fill the gap. This guide does not recommend any lender or any amount of borrowing; it shows what the federal limits are so you can see the size of the gap for your own program.