Grad PLUS Is Gone: What the 2026 Federal Loan Caps Mean for Dental School

On July 1, 2026 the federal government stopped writing new Grad PLUS loans. For twenty years Grad PLUS was the loan that made dental school financeable: it covered whatever your school said attendance cost, up to the full number, no cap. It is gone for anyone who did not already hold a Direct loan for dental school on that date. In its place is a hard ceiling: $50,000 a year and $200,000 total in federal Direct Unsubsidized loans for professional-degree students, dentistry included.

Against a four-year cost that runs $325k to $653k before interest, that cap is not a detail. It is the single biggest change to the economics of becoming a dentist in a generation, and almost no pre-dental student we talk to has done the arithmetic on it. This guide does it for all 64 schools in our model.

On the figures in this guide: dollar amounts from our cost model are estimates built from published cost-of-attendance data circa 2022, and unless a row says in-state they are out-of-state or private figures. Where we say “projected” we have grown the 2022 figure at 4% a year to 2026. Federal loan rules, interest rates and program terms are quoted as published for 2026–27 and can change; confirm anything you plan around with the school’s financial aid office and at studentaid.gov. Nothing here is financial advice.

What changed on July 1, 2026

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed in July 2025, rewrote federal graduate lending. The rules that apply to loans first disbursed on or after July 1, 2026:

• Grad PLUS is eliminated for new borrowers. A student who already had a Direct loan for their current dental program before July 1, 2026 keeps Grad PLUS access through July 1, 2029 under a legacy provision. Everyone entering in fall 2026 or later gets none.
• Professional students may borrow $50,000 per year in Direct Unsubsidized loans, with a $200,000 aggregate for the program. That aggregate includes anything borrowed for a prior graduate degree.
• A $257,500 lifetime cap across all federal borrowing, undergraduate included.
• Ordinary graduate students (a master’s, for instance) are capped lower still: $20,500 a year and $100,000 total.
• Repayment plans are reset. New borrowers choose between a Standard plan whose term scales with balance (25 years for balances of $100,000 or more) and a single income-based plan, the Repayment Assistance Plan. SAVE is gone.

The interest rate for 2026–27 Direct Unsubsidized loans to graduate and professional students is 8.07%, up from 7.94% the year before, plus a 1.057% origination fee. Rates reset every July 1 and are fixed for the life of the loan.

Why the cap binds at every single dental school

The $50,000 annual limit sounds like a lot until you look at what a year of dental school costs. In our model the cheapest first year of tuition, fees and living costs, at any of the 64 schools, is already above $50,000 once projected to today. So every year at every school runs past the annual cap, which means the $200,000 aggregate is the number that matters, and it is the same $200,000 whether you sit at Texas A&M / Baylor or Midwestern IL.

Subtract it from what four years actually cost and you get the gap: the money you now have to find from private lenders, family, scholarships, service programs or savings. Here it is for all 64 schools, using each school’s four-year cost of attendance projected to 2026, before any interest:

The median gap is $302,747. 34 schools leave a gap of $300,000 or more. Even the cheapest seat in the country, Texas A&M / Baylor’s out-of-state seat, leaves $124,624 uncovered.

What the gap costs you, not just what it is

Federal loans come with things private loans generally do not: income-driven repayment, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, death and disability discharge, and no cosigner. Every dollar pushed from the federal column into the private column loses those protections. Private lenders also price on credit, so a 22-year-old with a thin file and a cosigner may pay more than the 9.07% Grad PLUS used to charge, or may not be approved for the full gap at all.

There is a second-order effect that matters more for the school you choose. Grad PLUS was price-insensitive: it lent whatever the school charged, which is one reason tuition rose 3.5% a year without resistance. A hard cap makes the expensive seat harder to fill with borrowed money. Expect the $653k schools to lean harder on institutional aid, and expect that aid to go to the applicants they most want. Which brings us to the lever you still control.

The lever the cap makes more valuable, not less

You cannot change the cap. You cannot change tuition. What you can still change, on a completed application, is your DAT score, and the cap has just raised the price of a mediocre one.

Look at the table again. The gap at Texas A&M / Baylor is $124,624. The gap at Midwestern IL is $453,204. The difference is $328,580 of money you must now raise privately, for the same DDS or DMD and the same license. A score that clears a cheap public school’s class average, and a score strong enough to be offered merit aid at a private one, are the two ways to shrink that gap that do not involve a cosigner. Our DAT score ROI calculator shows which schools’ class averages your score meets and what those seats cost.

What to do about it this cycle

• Ask every school you apply to for its private-loan and institutional-aid plan for the class of 2031. Schools were caught flat-footed by this. The ones with an answer are the ones to trust.
• Model the gap before you accept, not after. Use the table above or the loan calculator with your actual school and residency.
• Read the service programs seriously. HPSP and the NHSC scholarship cover tuition outright. Before the cap they were a lifestyle choice. After it they are, for many students, the only way the numbers close without a private lender.
• Apply to the cheap seats you can realistically get. Texas, Illinois and the in-state public schools are the shortest gaps on the table. Their class averages are on their school pages.
• Treat your DAT as the financial instrument it is. Eight weeks of disciplined practice is the highest-return investment available to you in this entire process.