The annual cap gets the headlines. The aggregate limit may be the deeper constraint.
Under the OBBBA, professional students face a $200,000 aggregate limit on graduate-level federal borrowing. Graduate students face a $100,000 limit. The lifetime ceiling across all federal borrowing (undergraduate and graduate combined) is $257,500.
The Four-Year Wall
The annual cap limits how much a student can borrow each year. The aggregate limit caps how much they can borrow in total across their entire program. At maximum annual borrowing, a professional student exhausts the $200,000 aggregate in exactly four years — precisely the length of most medical and dental programs. A graduate student exhausts the $100,000 aggregate in about five years.
Any student whose program runs longer, or who borrowed federal loans during undergrad, will hit the aggregate ceiling before graduation — losing federal loan access for their remaining semesters entirely.
| Metric | Professional | Graduate |
|---|---|---|
| Annual cap | $50,000 | $20,500 |
| Aggregate limit | $200,000 | $100,000 |
| Years of borrowing before aggregate exhausted | 4.0 years | 4.9 years |
| Median total program cost (COA × duration) | $241,524 | $83,160 |
Author's note: The interaction between annual caps, aggregate limits, and prior undergraduate borrowing creates a three-dimensional constraint. A medical student who borrowed $40,000 for undergrad has only $217,500 in remaining lifetime borrowing capacity ($257,500 ceiling minus $40,000), potentially less than the total cost of their medical program alone. Under the statute, the lifetime borrowing maximum ($257,500) and the Parent PLUS aggregate ($65,000) are explicitly permanent: amounts "repaid, forgiven, canceled, or otherwise discharged" do not restore capacity. The graduate ($100,000) and professional ($200,000) aggregates do not contain this language, though the lifetime ceiling effectively imposes the same constraint.