Private Loans

[mspe22med]

My wife and I will be attending medical school as out of state students. We are going to need a private loan to cover a portion of our tuition/living. I am confused as to which lender to choose. Anyone have experience with the following:

Gradloans.com
Northstar.org
Nelnet.com
SallieMae

Good/Bad experiences with above lenders?

Thanks!

Steve

 

[velo]

your school's financial aid office would be the best resource, and actually I think you're often required to go through them (at least that's what we do here). As for private loans I'd also look into another nonprivate option, the new "grad plus" loan. Its a brand new federal loan program with a fixed interest rate (I believe at 8.5 or 9%) I know it sounds steep but most private loans are variable rate and right now the rate is in that ballpark and only looks like its going to go up more. Most private loans aren't capped until 18%. Anyway, maxing out stafford loans can get you 38.5k, and with the grad plus you can borrow another 30k. Together that should be more than enough.

 

[ShyRem]

My undergrad loans got consolidated with a bank and taken away from Nelnet. Nelnet was TERRIBLE. My loans were consolidated in June - they didn't get to the paperwork until MARCH. So here I am, paying on my student loans with the new bank, being a good person, and I'm getting notices that I need to pay Nelnet. I call Nelnet - and get the runaround. "call here, call here, call here"... after calling SEVEN different people/phone numbers, I called and rather lost it. Their only solution? "fill out deferment papers, but interest will continue to accrue, you know". Their stupidity cost me an extra $400 that they absolutely refused to take back (even though I sent them documentation of the date of consolidation). They threatened to put me into default, and considering I'm applying for med school private loans, I couldn't afford that. Do NOT use Nelnet. They SUCK NASTY WET MONKEY PATTIES.

Wow. I must really hate Nelnet.

 

[LO281OK]

Anyway, maxing out stafford loans can get you 38.5k, and with the grad plus you can borrow another 30k. Together that should be more than enough.

Unless they are OOS at Colorado! Holy crap I thought that kind of pricing woul dbe illegal!

 

[ZAZA67401]

northstar is awesome. I have loans through just about everybody now and hands down Northstar is the best. They have incentive programs too that rock cause they dont go away as soon as you consolidate (after grad) or defer, unlike other lenders. They have nice people, I always get a hold of someone right away and their website is easy www.northstar.org They are nonprofit and they have any loan you want (grad plus and stafford), again since you probably shouldn't do the private loan now that we can do grad plus. My school doesn't have them as a prefered lender, but I went with them anyway. It was a little more work (just calling them and verifying everything was complete and keeping on top of my schools financial aid department, that's really it, not really a hassle at all). I figured it was me who had to pay the money so I would choose who I wanted to lend it from and I think all schools have to honor that, they just would perfer it if you went through their lenders (but their lenders usually have bad deals)

Also access group is really good too! I just chose northstar.