There are a number of different types of student loans. They are all created to help students and parents discover the right choice for their respective situation. The overall cost of both private and public colleges are steadily increasing and students need to find the means for funding their education. Deciding which student loan, whether a private or federal student loan, is a very important decision. You will eventually be responsible for paying it back, so research all of your options. &nbsp

What is a Student Loan?

If you are a student who is preparing to borrow money as part of a student loan, prepare to learn all that you can about what a student loan is and why you need it. It is meant to help you as you pursue your collegiate education. Because the cost of education is continually rising, student loans give you more opportunity to go to the school of your choice. Be prepared to begin repaying of the loan a short time after you have finished your education. &nbsp

Types of Student Loans

There are three primary types of student loans available, a federal student loan, a private student loan or a parent loan. Two of the most common federal loans used by students are Stafford loans and Perkins loans. What is beneficial behind a federal student loan is that federal laws regulate the interest rates charged for these programs. A lender has to offer a federal loan at the specified interest rate, which is usually lower than the national interest rate. A federal student loan can also be consolidated after the student graduates, allowing the student loan repayment plan to fall under one large umbrella.

Private student loans are different from federal loans, and students applying for these don’t have to fill out federal forms. Private lenders offer these loans, making them cost more because there is no legal requirement to stay within a certain interest rate. Private loans also require a student to submit their credit history, and the interest and fees paid on the student loans are based upon the student’s credit score. Parents may be required to co-sign for a private student loan, making them responsible if the student has to defer payments at any time.

A parent loan, or the Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students (PLUS), is a type of student loan parents apply for to encompass any additional cost their child’s financial aid or student loans won’t cover. PLUS loans, like other federal loans, come with a fixed interest rate. These loans can also be consolidated, like the Stafford and Perkins loans, and parents are fully responsible for repaying PLUS loans to the lender after they are distributed.

Finding student loans that are right for you doesn’t have to be a difficult task. It just takes a little time and research before making a final decision. Talking with your college’s financial advisor can help you go down the right path when choosing a loan. It is important to go over all the student loan repayment options when choosing a loan program from a lender because you will be financially responsible after graduation. Deciding upon the right loan can help you achieve your dreams of higher education.

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If you’re a graduate or college parent with any outstanding federal student loans, you may be able to lower your monthly student loan payments by up to 42% just by consolidating your parent or student loans. When you consolidate your college loans, you may be able to extend the repayment term on your parent or student loans by up to 20 years. With that longer repayment term, since you have more time to repay, the amount you have to pay each month will typically go down.

NextStudent, a leading Phoenix-based education funding company, offers a student loan consolidation program with no application fees, no processing fees, and no credit checks. By consolidating your parent or student loans, your monthly payments could go down by up to 42%.

Here’s an example: Estimated monthly payments on a $75,000 NextStudent Federal Consolidation Loan fixed at 7.25% and repaid over an extended term of 30 years are $512, versus estimated monthly payments of $879 on a $75,000 Federal Stafford Loan issued at 7.22% and repaid over 10 years — a 41.8% reduction in monthly payment amount. (Your actual payment reduction may vary and will depend on the terms of the student loans you’re consolidating.)

Replace Your Variable-Rate Student Loans With One Fixed-Rate Student Loan Consolidation

If you took out your Federal PLUS Loans or Stafford Loans prior to July 1, 2006, those student loans are subject to variable interest rates that will adjust every year. So when interest rates rise, your monthly student loan payments may also go up. Student loan consolidation puts an end to rate increases and rising payments.

NextStudent’s student loan consolidation program gives you the security of a fixed interest rate. By consolidating your federal college loans with NextStudent, you’ll replace your variable-rate college loans with a fixed-rate student loan consolidation loan and lock in your new monthly payments, so you’ll never have to worry about interest rates rising and leaving you guessing about your monthly payment amount.

Make Repaying Your Student Loans Convenient and Hassle-Free with Student Loan Consolidation

If you have multiple college loans in repayment and you’re dealing with the hassle of multiple bills, multiple due dates, and multiple monthly payments to multiple lenders, a student loan consolidation could help make your repayment easier to manage.

With a student loan consolidation program, you can bundle all your eligible federal parent or student loans into one single consolidation loan with just one monthly bill, one lender, and one monthly payment that’s fixed for the life of your student loan consolidation.

Apply in Minutes to Consolidate Your Student Loans

Typically, you can apply for a student loan consolidation in minutes. Just visit an online student loan consolidation lender or make a quick phone call to the lender of your choice. It’s fast, easy, and free to apply, and there are NO fees, NO credit checks, and NO co-signers required.

There are also no prepayment penalties. When you consolidate your federal parent or student loans with NextStudent, you’ll never be charged extra for paying more than the minimum each month or for paying off your student loan consolidation early.

Student Loan Consolidation for Private Student Loans

If you have private student loans in addition to (or instead of) your federal student loans, you won’t be able to consolidate your private student loans under the federal student loan consolidation program. But you may be eligible to consolidate your private loans separately with a Private Consolidation Loan, which offers the same convenience of a single consolidated loan for your private student loans.

NextStudent believes that getting an education is the best investment you can make, and we’re dedicated to helping you pursue your education dreams by making college funding simple. Learn more about Student Loans, Private Student Loans and Student Loan Consolidation at NextStudent.com.



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If you’re a former student or a college parent with any outstanding federal student loans, you may be able to get up to 20 more years to repay just by consolidating your eligible federal parent or student loans. With that longer repayment term, since you have more time to repay, the amount you have to pay each month will typically go down. You may be able to cut your monthly student loan payments by up to 42% — just by consolidating!

Cut Your Payments on Your Student Loans by up to 42%

Here’s an example of how you can lower your monthly student loan payments when you consolidate your federal college loans and take advantage of a longer repayment term: Estimated monthly payments on a $75,000 student loan consolidation fixed at 7.25% and repaid over an extended term of 30 years are $512, versus estimated monthly payments of $879 on a $75,000 Federal Stafford Loan issued at 7.22% and repaid over 10 years — that’s a 41.8% reduction in monthly payment amount. (Your actual payment reduction may vary and will depend on the terms of the parent or student loans you’re consolidating.)

Get More Time to Repay Your Student Loans

Federal PLUS parent loans and Stafford student loans are issued with standard repayment terms of 10 years. You may be able to get up to 30 years to repay these federal parent and student loans when you consolidate them into a student loan consolidation.

How long you get to repay will depend on the total outstanding balance of your education debt: If your outstanding education debt totals $20,000 – $39,999, you’ll have 20 years to pay back your student loan consolidation.? If your outstanding education debt totals $40,000 – $59,999, you’ll have 25 years. If you have $60,000 or more in education debt when you consolidate your federal student loans, you’ll have 30 years to pay back your Federal student loan consolidation.

No Fees. No Credit Checks. No Prepayment Penalties.

Even though you can get more time to repay your federal parent and student loans by consolidating, there are no prepayment penalties on a Federal Consolidation Loan, so you won’t be assessed any additional fees for paying more than the minimum each month or for paying off your student loan consolidation early, should you choose to.

There are also no application fees, no processing fees, and no credit checks when you consolidate through the federal student loan consolidation program.

Replace Your Variable-Rate Student Loans With a Fixed-Rate Consolidation Loan

If you took out your Federal PLUS Loans or Stafford Loans prior to July 1, 2006, those loans are subject to variable interest rates that will adjust every year. So when interest rates rise, your monthly student loan payments may also go up. But you can put an end to rate increases and rising payments when you consolidate your parent or student loans.

The federal student loan consolidation program gives you the security of a fixed interest rate. By consolidating your federal

student loans, you’ll replace your variable-rate college loans with a fixed-rate consolidation loan, so you won’t have to worry about interest rates rising and leaving you guessing about your monthly payment amount.

Make Just One Payment for All Your Federal Student Loans

If you have multiple student loans in repayment and you’re dealing with the hassle of multiple bills, multiple due dates, and multiple monthly payments to multiple lenders, a Federal Consolidation Loan could help make your student loan repayment easier to manage.

With the federal student loan consolidation program, you can bundle all your eligible federal parent or student loans into one single consolidation loan with just one monthly bill, one lender, and one monthly payment that’s fixed for the life of your consolidation loan.

Consolidate Your Private Student Loans

If you have private student loans in addition to your federal student loans, you won’t be able to consolidate your private student loans under the federal student loan consolidation program. But you may be able to consolidate your private student loans separately with a Private Consolidation Loan, which offers the same convenience of a single consolidated loan for your private student loans.



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Private student loans are credit-based and have more attractive repayment terms as well as interest rates. It can really help in saving money every month unlike the Federal student loans. Private student loan consolidation is simply the process of refinancing and combining private student loans into a single debt only. It may result to a lower monthly loan payments thus will also lessen your worries about your multiple loans.

The very main essence of a private student loan consolidation is to lessen the monthly payment of students who have multiple loans. By getting quotes from various lenders, a student can have knowledge about how to get the best deal with all the prevailing market rates present nowadays. Furthermore, private student loan consolidation can result to an extended loan payment. This gives the student borrowers enough time to pay their loans with fewer burdens. These beneficial advantages offered by the private student loan consolidation are not possible if students have several loans to handle.

There are various private student loan consolidation companies which offer more benefits. One of these is the interest rate reduction which can result to lower loan monthly payments to think of. The options for the loan repayment procedures depend upon the qualifications being required by a particular lending company. Thus, it is also the work of the lending company to choose the best private student loan consolidation program suitable for a particular student loaner.

Indeed, private student loan consolidation brings various benefits. However, one should still be aware of some situations like the drawbacks of having a private student loan consolidated.

Student loans are indeed a very big help for students who are deeply in need of some financial aids. However, all students who have decided to avail of a particular student loan should bear in mind the responsibility in repaying the borrowed amount of money. In fact, there are so many ways on how to pay off student loans.

The very first thing to do is to develop a plan on how to pay off student loans. Second is to look for a summer jobs or internships to be able to save a lot of money and not waste your valuable time. Part-time jobs will also do to help pay a loan.

Also, take into consideration to consolidate current student loans to have lower interest rates. Furthermore, one should perform volunteer works like teaching, medical works or even military works to reduce at least somehow a debt. It would also be good to apply for some grants and scholarships while in school to lessen the burden.

And lastly, take good care of the credits. Late payments should be avoided to have a good credit score.

It is important to pay off private student loans as quickly as possible. Sometimes, early paying off of the loan will lessen the burden along with a particular student loan. To make paying off easy, one can start paying off first the non-subsidized loans for it has an obligatory interest. Also, if one has several loans already, paying off first the smallest loan would be much better.

Just always remember to always do the best in paying off student loans. Be a responsible student loaner!

Failing to pay off student loans can stick with you for decades. You can’t go bankrupt on student loans so don’t count on that as saving you down the road!



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It’s crunch time for college students trying to secure the money they need for the fall semester. But with lenders continuing to suspend their student loan programs — the count now stands at 131 federal loan lenders and 30 private loan lenders — students may find themselves challenged to locate lenders that are still offering federal or private student loans.

 

 

 

In an attempt to help lenders be able to continue making new federal student loans, the government included a provision in the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act, signed into law in May, aimed at providing capital for cash-strapped lenders.

 

 

Under this legislation, the Department of Education can buy federal college loans from lenders, thereby providing these lenders with the liquidity they need to continue funding new parent and student loans. The law specifically targets lenders who, in the current credit crunch, are unable to find investors in the secondary market willing to purchase their student loan portfolios.

 

 

 

Even with this legislation in place, however, lenders continue to find themselves forced to suspend their student loan programs. As recently as July 28, the Brazos Higher Education Service Corp., the 26th-largest originator of federal student loans in 2007, and the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority, the largest student loan issuer to Massachusetts residents, both announced that they would no longer be able to provide either new or current borrowers with student loans.

 

 

 

As the suspensions of both federal and private student loan programs keep spreading through all types of lenders — large and small; for-profit and nonprofit; banks, non-banks, and credit unions; state loan agencies and schools-as-lenders — students and their families are finding themselves with fewer borrowing options to get the parent and student loans they need to pay the fall tuition bills that are coming due over these next few weeks.

 

 

 

Two Major Lenders the Latest Casualties of Student Loan Crisis

 

 

 

The Brazos Group, a primarily nonprofit group of higher education lending, servicing, and other financial aid companies, first announced that it would stop offering federal college loans back n March. In May, however, after the government passed the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act, Brazos once again began offering federal parent and student loans, saying that the government’s short-term liquidity plan had renewed the organization’s confidence in its ability to continue offering student loans.

 

 

 

But Brazos once again suspended its education lending program late last month, citing continued turmoil in the student loan industry.

 

 

 

Brazos Executive Vice President Ellis Tredway said his organization simply “ran out of time to get everything in place” to issue new student loans for the fall.

 

 

 

The Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority, which issued more than $500 million in college loans to 40,000 Massachusetts college students and their families last year, had already suspended its federal student loan program in April. Now, MEFA has also pulled the plug on its non-federal private loan program, which provided Massachusetts students with fixed-rate private student loans.

 

 

 

“While we continue to pursue every possible option, raising the necessary funds to offer fixed–interest rate private education loans is taking longer than originally projected and has become even more challenging,” said Tom Graf, MEFA’s executive director.

 

 

 

Students Face the Uncertainty of Switching Lenders

 

 

With over 8 million students and parents having turned to federal college loans in 2006–07, according to the College Board, the number or families that stand to be affected by the ongoing wave of lender departures this year is not unsubstantial.

 

 

Last week, financial aid officers at Texas A&M University — a school with over 54,000 students — heard from seven different lenders warning that they would no longer be able to offer federal student loans, a situation that has made more than a few borrowers uneasy.

 

 

 

Dyneche Duffield, an incoming college student headed to Houston Baptist University, is uncomfortable with the prospect of having to establish a relationship with a new lender other than her local bank, which used to offer student loans.

“I would have much rather taken out a loan there than somewhere where I didn’t know anyone,” Duffield said.

 

 

 

While students like Duffield may still be able to go directly to the Department of Education for their federal college loans or find those remaining lenders who are still offering private student loans (albeit with more stringent credit criteria that are making it harder for students to qualify), the magnitude of the problem within the student loan credit markets and how deeply it has permeated the college loan industry is alarming to many administrators and officials in higher education.

 

 

 

Kathryn Osmond, executive director of student financial services at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, finds the situation with MEFA to be particularly indicative of a long-lasting and serious problem.

 

 

“An economy that is in such a tailspin that it affects a critical agency like MEFA,” said Osmond, “is an economy that scares me.”

 

 



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