College Loans Consolidation Blog

I always find essay writing difficult and I am sure that all of you reading this must have the same feeling. But at the same time, it is important to fulfill all your college projects and assignments on time. Yes it is irritating and extremely difficult especially when you have to pour your heart out on topics that you do not like. So here is where, most student look out for online services that provide custom essay writing. But hiring a writer for your projects and essays is not always as easy as it seems. You need to be sure that the content that you are going to get is relevant to your project topics. Hence it is appropriate to ask your essay provider for a small sample so that you can make up your mind if you wish to buy essay. Lastly do not always fall for cheap rates since cheap writer more than often supply you with duplicate content.

A university’s financial aid office can and will recommend a private lender for students to work with— however, it is just that, a recommendation. The Higher Education Act mandates that schools can not require students to get loans through the preferred lenders suggested by their college’s financial aid office. According to NextStudent, a leading Phoenix-based education funding company, students and parents should keep in mind that it is their decision when it comes to choosing “the who” behind who funds their Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) loans.

Federal Family Education Loan Program

Interest rates on FFELP loans are mandated by the Department of Education, so all lenders that participate in this program must charge the same federal interest rate. Therefore, lenders must compete for business in other ways and most do so by offering special benefits, such as discounts for electronic payments and rate reductions for on-time payment history. When deciding on a lender it’s important to take a look at these benefits carefully, and choose the lender that can save you the most over the long haul.

Also, lenders compete for business by offering different types of repayment schedules. Borrowers should look for a lender that offers flexible repayment options, such as reduced payment or postponed repayment. Hardship policies are also an important factor because certain lenders will, under certain hardship circumstances, lower borrower’s monthly payments or postpone repayment until the hardship has passed.

Lastly, look for a lender that offers the best customer service, support and convenience, such as online applications, a toll-free contact number, and a professional, courteous staff that will help you through the loan process and over the life of your loan.

NextStudent’s FFELP Loan Benefits

NextStudent offers some of the most competitive benefits for FFELP loans. First and foremost, NextStudent is committed to excellent customer service. Every NextStudent customer is assigned their own Education Finance Advisor, one person to help the customer throughout the entire loan process. Also, there are no collateral or credit checks when applying for a NextStudent FFELP loan.

The NextStudent Premier Stafford loan package includes a 2 percent upfront cash rebate, a 3 percent cash rebate on the remaining principal balance after the first 30 months of consecutive on-time payments and .375 percent interest rate reduction when the borrower elects to use auto-debit for repayment.

The NextStudent PLUS and Graduate PLUS loan package includes a 3 percent cash rebate on the remaining principal balance after the first 12 months of consecutive on-time payments, a 2 percent interest rate reduction after the first 48 months of consecutive on-time payments and a .25 percent interest rate reduction when the borrower elects to use auto-debit for repayment

Make sure to choose a lender that best works for you when finding a company to fund your FFELP loan.

The student loan advisers at NextStudent are helpful and knowledgeable about student loans. They are a trusted source in getting you the appropriate information about your student loan consolidation, student loan options and helping students get the college financing they need.

NextStudent has a sleek new website with upgraded features designed to offer you the most comprehensive and easy-to-use financial aid resource on the Web.

We’ve simplified our online application to make applying for student loans even easier, whether you’re a parent, undergraduate, or graduate.

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Check our education news bulletins to keep up to date on what’s happening in the world of financial aid, student loans, and higher education — all the changes and developments that affect you and how you’ll be able to pay for school.

Described as a “technological glitch,” Northwestern University accidentally sent acceptance letters to 50 potential candidates for the school’s Kellogg School of Management, the Chicago Tribune reports (“Kellogg School of Management Accidentally Sends Acceptance Letters to 50 Rejected Applicants,” Dec. 18, 2008).

It truly was a computer error, said a Northwestern spokeswoman Megan Washburn, who stated that this was the first time the school’s automated mail-merge program had erroneously sent an e-mail acceptance letter.

“It has never happened before,” Washburn said. “Our systems have been in place for years. We have never experienced a problem.” She pointed out that the 50 candidates only represent about 1 percent of the 5,500 applicants who applied to the full-time business graduate program.

One student celebrated his acceptance to Kellogg at a dinner with his parents only to discover the next day that he had actually been rejected when he logged onto the school’s website.

“It was pretty embarrassing, to be honest,” said the Chicago resident who asked the Tribune not to identify him. “It’s like you won the lottery and had the rug pulled out from under you.”

Washburn said that the school had been contacting everyone who had received an acceptance letter in error to explain the computer glitch. The 50 individuals will be reimbursed their $235 application fee as a result of the mix up, she said.

Students who want to maximize their federal financial aid for the 2009–10 academic year should fill out their FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) this week — the first week applications are accepted, reports The Baltimore Sun (“Ringing in the New Year With FAFSA Might Be a Good Move for 2009,” Dec. 30, 2009).

“The sooner you get [the FAFSA] done, the better,” says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid, a financial aid website.

Since many states and colleges use the FAFSA to determine how to allocate their funds and some schools have early admissions deadlines, students who complete their application sooner rather than later may have a better chance of getting federal financial aid. Schools often have two separate financial aid funds, each with their own deadlines, and make more money available to families who met the earlier deadline, Kantrowitz says.

He recommends that families should always fill out the FAFSA even if they think they make too much money to qualify for need-based financial aid; a family making $100,000 or more could still qualify for federal and state aid to attend an expensive institution.

Resources to Get Started

* Find out how to fill out your FAFSA online.

* Use the FAFSA4caster at www.fafsa4caster.ed.gov to calculate how much financial aid you may qualify for and to get tips on how to reduce the time it takes you to complete your FAFSA.

* Call the Federal Student Aid Information Center for free at 1-800-433-3243 if you need help with your application.

* Go to www.finaid.org for tips on how to maximize the need-based aid you could receive.

The colleges and universities that use students’ SAT and ACT standardized test scores when making college admissions and financial aid decisions should base these decisions on tests that more closely reflect a student’s high school achievement and understanding of the high school curriculum, according to the recommendations made by a new commission comprised of influential college admissions officials.

The commission, led by William R. Fitzsimmons, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Harvard University, recently completed a yearlong study that questioned the relevancy of SAT and ACT tests for college admissions (“College Panel Calls for Less Focus on SATs,” The New York Times, Sept. 21, 2008).

“It would be much better for the country,” Fitzsimmons says, “to have students focusing on high school courses that, based on evidence, will prepare them well for college and also prepare them well for the real world beyond college, instead of their spending enormous amounts of time trying to game the SAT.”

Admissions officers should rely instead on exams that are closer linked to high school curriculum like the College Board’s Advanced Placement tests and SAT Subject Tests and the International Baccalaureate exams when making admissions decisions, Fitzsimmons says. Unlike the SAT and ACT exams, he argues, these other tests have fewer ties to the billion-dollar test-prep industry.

Test Scores Indicate Students Who Are Well-Off Have An Advantage

Fitzsimmons’ research group, convened by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, found that the nature of standardized testing places less emphasis on students learning their high school curriculum and more emphasis on test preparation — a discrepancy that favors affluent students who can afford test-prep resources.

The commission’s report found that standardized test scores emphasized the socio-economic differences of the SAT’s and ACT’s test-taking population and were reflective of a student’s race and ethnicity, socio-economic class, and their family’s level of educational attainment.

“Society likes to think that the SAT measures people’s ability or merit,” Fitzsimmons says. “But no one in college admissions who visits the range of secondary schools we visit, and goes to the communities we visit … can come away thinking that standardized tests can be a measure of someone’s true worth or ability.”

Testing Companies, Schools Disagree on Report’s Findings

Representatives from the College Board — which administers the SAT exam, taken by 1.6 million high school students this year — and ACT Inc. — which is responsible for the ACT exam, taken by 1.4 million students this year — both disputed the report’s findings. The companies contend that their tests do measure students’ understanding of classroom material, not just their test-preparation skills, according to a Bloomberg article (“Colleges Shouldn’t Rely on SAT, ACT Tests Study Says,” Sept. 22, 2008).

“Hundreds of national research studies show that the SAT is a valid predictor of college success,” the College Board wrote in a statement. “We have long advised that the use of the SAT in the admission process is in combination with high school grades.”

Prior to the report’s recommendations, only 280 four-year schools, including Wake Forest University, Smith College, Bates College, and the University of Wisconsin, had stopped requiring the standardized tests for admissions, and the report calls for more schools to follow suit.

For nearly two months, thousands of the The Princeton Review’s private files including folders containing the company’s and test-takers’ personal data were unintentionally made accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, according to an article in The New York Times (“Student Files Are Exposed on Web Site,” Aug. 18, 2008).

Digital files containing student identification information, test-preparation materials, and internal communication documents, which should have been password protected, have been listed on an easy-to-find, publically viewable webpage ever since the test-preparatory firm switched Internet service providers in late June.

The error was discovered by a rival company while it was conducting competitive research on The Princeton Review. The rival company, which asked not to be named, provided the Times with the Web address containing the files. The Princeton Review promptly shut off access to the exposed private data on its website after the newspaper informed it of the error on Monday. It is not known how many people may have accessed the files.

Security Error Blamed On Company’s Faulty Internet Protection Practices

One of the files listed the identification information of about 34,000 Florida elementary school students, including their birthdays, ethnicities, and whether they had learning disabilities. The school system had hired The Princeton Review to build an online tool that would measure students’ academic progress.

Another 74,000 students in a Virginia school system — which had also contracted with The Princeton Review to measure and improve student performance — had their names and birth dates exposed.

The test-preparatory company’s own educational materials for the LSAT, PSAT and SAT exams, as well as its course schedules, internal instructor evaluations, and the entire texts of some of its study books like “Cracking the LSAT” were also open to the public. Another folder on the site contained digital scans of eight official SAT and PSAT exams from 2005 to 2007 that included accompanying files explaining how The Princeton Review uses older exams to create practice tests.

Mike Haro, an analyst for Sophos, an Internet security firm, says the security mishap is an indication that The Princeton Review was not following “accepted” Internet-security protocol by keeping confidential files and innocuous files on the same computers. “In this case it would have made sense for the company to separate information such as names of the students from their test scores and whatever confidential information the company had,” Haro said. “But we are finding that companies today don’t change until they experience the pain of a data breach that is exposed to the public.

Over 6,000 MBA students have been implicated in a huge cheating scandal involving the website Scoretop which illegally provided “live” prep questions to students taking their Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT — the test that many MBA programs require for admission to graduate school, according to an article in Business Week (“GMAT Cheating Controversy Grows,” June 27, 2008).

Contrary to authorized test preparation companies like Kaplan or Manhattan GMAT which legally purchase retired test questions from GMAT to help prepare their member students, Scoretop extended 30-day VIP service to students who paid the $30-fee to access questions that were actively being used on GMAT exams.

On June 23, the Graduate Management Admission Council, the owner of the GMAT, won a lawsuit against Scoretop for copyright infringement, since Scoretop published the “live” GMAT questions online without permission. The judgment allowed the court to seize Scoretop’s hard drive, which contained payment and other data, and to identify more than 6,000 individuals who had paid for the website’s service.

GMAC originally said it would cancel the scores of all students who cheated on the exam, make sure they could never take the GMAT again, and notify the respective business schools of students who had cheated on the exam.

Robert Burgoyne, GMAC’s legal counsel recently said, however, that GMAC probably wouldn’t cancel the scores of all 6,000 Scoretop VIP members who took the test, just those who knew using the questions was illegal. “We’ll look for something that actually links people to conduct they should have known was improper,” Burgoyne said.

For the last few years, college tuition has been on the rise across the United States. In 2004/05 Arizona students paid $10,863 in tuition and fees to attend four year public colleges and $19,448 to attend four year private colleges. With approximately 35,366 Arizona residents between 18 and 24 with a Bachelor’s degree, recent grads are feeling the financial burden and are in search of student loan management solutions.

NextStudent, the Phoenix-based premiere education funding company, recommends the Federal Student Loan Consolidation Program as a smart strategy to free up extra cash, improve credit scores and help manage the monthly budget.

The program was created by Congress to help simplify student loan repayment and make monthly payments more affordable for the newly graduated student. The term on a consolidation loan is 30 years, 18 years longer then the term on student loans, which can lower monthly payments by up to 60%.

By consolidating federal student loans, borrowers bundle multiple loans into one single loan. Therefore, credit reports reflect payment in full on the multiple outstanding loans which can help recent graduates qualify for lower interest rates on car loans and/or mortgages.

Consolidation with NextStudent is free of charge and there are no fees or prepayment penalties. NextStudent offers an easy online application with Electronic Signature, and NextStudent’s personal Education Finance Advisors help walk students and parents through the consolidation process.

When to Consolidate

It is easy to qualify for a NextStudent consolidation loan. All a student or parent needs is at least two federal student loans from two different lenders that total $10,500. In as little as 5 minutes applicants can qualify for consolidation over the phone, and get their questions answered by an individually assigned Education Finance Advisor. The program does not require credit checks or co-signers.

Student borrowers are eligible to consolidate during the grace or repayment period of their student loans. NextStudent offers students a “New Grad” incentive, a .6 percent discount off of the fixed interest rate, if they consolidate during the six month grace period after graduation.

Parents can consolidate federal PLUS loans after the final distribution of the loan. They do not need to wait until the student graduates from college. Because consolidation is based on a borrower’s social security number, parents can consolidate multiple PLUS loans taken out for multiple children.

Additional Incentives

When borrowers consolidate their loans, they lock the new loan in at a fixed interest rate. Because these are federal loans, that interest rate is set by the government. Therefore, when choosing a company to consolidate with, borrowers should look at the incentive packages offered by lenders because these are the only true differences between lending companies.

NextStudent offers borrowers the option of three packages. The “Standard Locked,” which offers a 1 percent LOCKED RATE reduction after 36 consecutive on-time payments and a .25 percent discount when the borrower opts to pay via Auto-Debit; the “2 %,” which offers a 2 percent rate reduction after 36 consecutive on-time payments and a .25 percent discount when the borrower opts to pay via Auto-Debit; and the “Google,” which offers a .375 percent discount after six months of on-time payments, a 1 percent discount after 36 consecutive on-time payments and a .25 percent discount when borrower opts to pay via Auto-Debit.

It has been the hot topic in the news for the past couple months and on my blog, so we all should know by now that the 110th Congress is controlled by the Democrats. Why is that big news? Because 2007 is the first year the Democrats have controlled the Congress since 1995.

Surprisingly, the hot-button issue in this new Congress has been that of postsecondary education. In an attempt not to be outshone when it comes to middle-class issues, the Republicans also have rallied behind higher education initiatives. The end result has become something of a power struggle.

According to a Feb. 13, 2007 article written by Arthur M. Hauptman titled “Missed Opportunities on Financial Aid” that appeared in Inside Higher Ed:

“With support for postsecondary education now a hot political topic, federal politicians from both parties are engaged in a tug of war to see who can outbid the other in providing more financial aid to students and their families. House Democrats, as part of their ‘first 100 hours’ agenda, pushed through a bill to cut interest rates in half for some new borrowers. Democrats in both the House and Senate followed up by proposing the first increase in the Pell Grant maximum award in several years. The White House, not to be outdone, has now proposed more than a 10 percent increase in Pell Grants as part of its fiscal 2008 budget package and more increases down the line, all to be paid for by reduced lender profits and cuts in other federal student aid programs.”

Who Wins, Who Loses?

Hauptman, a public policy consultant who specializes in higher education finance issues, reported:

“More importantly, the Democrats’ plan helps the wrong borrowers. The interest rate cuts are limited to new borrowers in the subsidized student loan program, who, by definition, already qualify for federal interest payments while they are in school. As a result, they are precisely the students who least need the assistance in the near term, because the federal government is already paying the interest on their loans (which also means there is no net cost to the government while these borrowers remain in college, since it is already responsible during that time for making all interest payments to lenders). In this scenario, the students’ benefit from lower interest rates and the new cost to the government will occur only when repayment begins at least several years from now.

“By contrast, the House-passed legislation provides no help for the millions of borrowers who are currently having trouble repaying their loans because of high debt levels and/or low incomes. It would have been much better if the House had sought to help these borrowers, for example, by allowing them to consolidate all their federal student loans into a single loan repayment schedule when they leave school and begin repayment. This expansion of existing consolidation provisions would greatly simplify the student loan system by allowing borrowers to refinance their student loans once they leave school.

“Or the House could have sought to expand the largely underutilized income contingent provisions that give borrowers the option to repay their loans on the basis of their income once they complete their educational program. Rather than provide postponed help for new borrowers, these two changes would provide immediate relief for millions of borrowers who need the help now. And these two changes could actually save the government money rather than add to costs if they were financed directly by the federal government rather than having the loans continue to be held by the private sector which demands federal payments over the life of the loan.

“Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the newly restored chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, seems to understand this problem. He has emphasized the need to expand income contingency for borrowers who need help with their repayments and in moving toward greater reliance on direct loans as a way to cut government costs. Hopefully, he can persuade his colleagues in the Senate to provide some real repayment relief to borrowers rather than the cosmetics offered by the House. Otherwise borrowers with repayment problems will be out of luck for another several years until the politicians turn their attention back to this issue.”