Guide to Education Grants

Another Student Loan Resource:
Recently, there has been lots of negative press out there regarding college financial aid officers receiving special treatment, trips or the like from student loan providers, and New York’s Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is going after such companies and individuals.

So, it is refreshing that there is some positive press to report, chiefly, growth in the student loan industry. On March 26, 2007, the Department of Education announced the “Top 100 Consolidating Lenders for 2006 and 2005,” according to the March 26, 2007 National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs Inc.’s Daily Briefing. If you are a “bean counter” or someone interested in the nitty-gritty details, you can get the entire list here: http://www.fp.ed.gov.

Small Enough to Care; Big Enough to Get it Done

However, keep in mind that “bigger” does not necessarily mean “better.” While Sallie Mae and the other top three contenders may dwarf their competition, newcomer NextStudent has cracked the top five, and likely has done so due to its ability to deliver excellent customer service and benefits to its clientele.

The giant Sallie Mae Corp. (SLM), originally a government lender, continues to dominate the consolidation market in the first position for fiscal year 2006, based on amounts of new guarantees. Nelnet came in second and Citibank Student Loan Corp. achieved the third position for 2006, with total loans approximating 25 percent of Sallie Mae’s total, respectively. Both Nelnet and Citibank continue to do battle for the No. 2 and No. 3 spots.

A new top five challenger is NextStudent, Phoenix, which recently has shown incredible growth and has jumped from the 17th largest consolidating lender for 2005 to the fourth position for fiscal year 2006. As recently as 2002, NextStudent found itself in the No. 61 position, moving up a total of 44 spots to claim the 17th largest consolidator award just two years ago.

One of the reasons why NextStudent has seen such incredible growth may be found in its outstanding dedication to customer service, where borrowers are assigned their own personal Education Finance Advisor who will guide each borrower through the student loan process, from start to finish. Another factor may be that the company offers a 1 percent LOCKED discount on the borrower’s interest rate for the ENTIRE TERM of the federal consolidation loan after 36 on-time consecutive payments. This saves borrowers thousands over the course of the repayment term, and is just one of many aggressive benefits offered by NextStudent.

It is important to keep up to date on all the news regarding student loans and education.

Talk to the education financial advisors at NextStudent. They have all the information and advice you need on student loans. Check out www.nextstudent.com.

Be sure to tune in next Monday for my next blog on student loan issues in the news.

Student Loan Girl

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 10:51 am and is filed under Student Loans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.