The public service loan forgiveness program dismisses any remaining balance (free of income taxes on the forgiven debt) for any decade-long public servant (all government and most nonprofit employees) who meets three additional criteria. First, those 120 payments have to be on time and in the exact amount due. Second, you need to have the right kind of loan: Only federal direct loans qualify, not Perkins loans or the old Federal Family Education Loans (or FFELs, as they are known in education circles). Nothing about the fix-it fund changes any of this.

The third criterion is where there is now some wiggle room. You’re also supposed to be in the right kind of repayment plan during those 120 months, namely one in which your payment depends on your income and thus fluctuates each year depending on what you can afford to pay. Many borrowers got bad advice from loan servicers about enrolling in repayment plans and ended up in graduated or extended repayment plans that were supposed to be ineligible.

So now comes the fix-it fund. It could allow some of the people who were in a list of formerly ineligible repayment plans into the loan forgiveness program if they apply for the exception before the $350 million runs out (or after Congress allocates more money, if that ever happens). Only people who paid more than they would have under an income-driven repayment plan on their most recent monthly loan payment and the one 12 months ago (and thus were consistently overpaying, in effect) will be eligible.

If this sounds like it applies to you, you need to do the following things in the following order. First, you need to make 120 on-time payments in the right job, with the right loan; you can’t go looking for relief yet if you’ve made only 90 payments, even if you already know that 30 of them, five or more years ago, were in the wrong repayment plan. Then, you need to ask FedLoan, your servicer, to begin formal forgiveness proceedings. It will then reject you for being in the wrong repayment plan for part or all of that 120-month period.

Only once that happens can you apply for the money, by sending an email to FedLoan. (The address is on the Department of Education’s website.) The department has a template there that you can follow.