Debt Control Guide

Obtaining College Loans With No Cosigner

August 28th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed

With the price of schooling systematically increasing each year it is becoming more and more difficult to locate the capital essential for a college education and an increasing number of students focus their thoughts on ideas for raising the money they need rather than concentrating on their studies.

As if this were not bad enough in itself all too many students discover that once they have left college they are saddled with so much debt that it simply drags them down and will probably take many years to pay off. Now, if this seems to be a grim picture then for a lot of students the problem of financing a college education is compounded by a need to raise the funds needed without the availability of a cosigner to their loans.

These days college funding is not simply a matter of looking to a single source of finance for the majority of students but is a matter of putting together a portfolio of funds from a variety of different sources.

The first port of call for every student must be to look for scholarships and grants. Far too many students ignore this source of essentially free money altogether and yet you would be surprised at just how many scholarships and grants are on offer today. In most instances of course the sums of money available are relatively small but even so can be extremely useful as one part of your overall funding plan.

The next source of funding ought to be federal loans through schemes such as Perkins and Stafford loans which you can get as both subsidized and unsubsidized loans. Perkins loans particularly useful because of their low rate of interest but are also the most difficult loans to get and require students to demonstrate financial hardship.

Unhappily at this point in spite of the fact that you will have begun to create your portfolio it is unlikely that it will give you sufficient money and you will need to start casting your net wider and here you will have two routes to follow.

If you can get the assistance and support of a guardian or parent then they can apply for a federal student PLUS loan to cover the shortfall between the funding which you have been able to obtain yourself and the overall cost of attending college. Student PLUS loans are subject to your parent or guardian having a reasonable credit rating but the requirements are not as strict as those which would be applied by a private lender.

If you have not got a parent or guardian to whom you can turn or simply decide to go it alone then you will need to seek a private loan and exactly how simple that will be will depend to a large degree on your own credit history. In the majority of cases lenders will be quite happy to grant you a loan as long as your credit rating is good and will require you to have a cosigner if you have no credit history against which they can make their decision or have a poor credit history. However, with a growing number of people with a poor or bad credit history nowadays there is also a growing number of lenders who are prepared to grant loans without the requirement for a cosigner so it is simply a case of shopping around.

A bad credit loan without a requirement for a cosigner will naturally cost you more than a standard good credit loan but as long as you take your time and shop around carefully you will find a loan at a reasonable rather than exorbitant interest rate.

Visit TheStudentLoansCenter.com for information on financial aid for college and getting a bad credit alternative student loan with no cosigner