You’ll want to consolidate July 1 or after to lock in low fixed rates.

Given the credit crunch, you won’t see an onslaught of lenders urging you to consolidate. So you have to hustle on your own.

If you’re graduating with a bachelor’s degree this spring, you might want to consolidate loans taken out as a freshman or a sophomore as a way to lock in low fixed rates.

What kind of a rate would you get by waiting?

“They’re among the best rates ever,” said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org.

You would lock in a rate of 3.625 percent if you’re in college or if you’re a graduate who consolidates during the grace period, a six-month window after graduation before loans must start being repaid.

That’s down from 6.62 percent.

And if you’re already in the repayment period and haven’t yet consolidated, you could lock in a rate of 4.25 percent on a Stafford loan.

Students who already are repaying variable-rate Stafford loans are paying 7.22 percent. Parents with PLUS loans that have a variable rate could lock in a rate of 5.125 percent on July 1 or after. That would be down from 8.02 percent now.

You can consolidate variable-rate Stafford and PLUS loans disbursed before July 1, 2006, but you can consolidate only loans that haven’t yet been consolidated.

Many students also have federal loans issued after July 1, 2006, and those loans already have a fixed rate. The fixed rate for unsubsidized Stafford loans, the most popular federal student loans, is 6.8 percent. You can’t consolidate those loans to get lower rates.

Al Hermsen, director of student financial aid at Wayne State University in Detroit, said his office hasn’t seen many students ask about loan consolidations this year, as it has in other years.

But loan consolidations aren’t a hot product.

Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest student-loan lender, announced in April that it would stop offering federal consolidation loans. All top 10 lenders that consolidated student loans no longer offer those loans, either.

Hermsen, who has two children who graduated from college this year, said he’s still seeing consolidation offers pop up in his mail. But he said that some look like official notices from the government, and they aren’t. So students should study any offers they get carefully.

One legitimate option is the Federal Direct Loan program (www.loanconsolidation.ed.gov). You can consolidate with the program even if your school didn’t participate in it.

If you do nothing, of course, the interest rates on your variable-rate student loans would drop anyway July 1. But you’d get that rate for only one year. Given the concerns about inflation, it’s possible that rates could go up in the future.

It could be savvy to take advantage of this huge drop in rates and lock in something low July 1 or after.

What about private student loans?

Well, most people aren’t going to save much money by consolidating them. Private loans would be consolidated at variable rates – not the low fixed rates associated with consolidating federal student loans.

You can’t consolidate private loans and federal loans together.

Still, if you’re a college graduate who’s been in the work force for a while and has a far better credit score now, it might be possible to save money by consolidating private loans.

When you consolidate, aim to pay off college loans over 10 years, not 20.

Yes, you’d reduce the monthly payment by one-third if you extend student loan payments for 20 years. Yet Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, warns that you’re more than doubling the total amount that you’d pay in interest over the life of those loans.