Getting College Funding With No Cosigner
With education costs continuing to rise from year to year it is getting harder to find the money necessary for a college education and many students spend more time worrying about raising the funds needed than they do concentrating on their studies. If this were not bad enough in itself far too many students discover that once they have graduated they are left with so much loan debt that it quite simply drags them down and will probably take years to repay. If this paints a grim picture then for many students the problem of financing an education is compounded by the need to raise the necessary funds without having a cosigner to their loans.
College funding nowadays is not merely a matter of turning to one single source of finance for most students but is a matter of creating a portfolio of funds from a variety of different sources.
The first port of call for all students should be to look for scholarships for college and grants. A lot of students ignore this source of effectively free money altogether and yet you would be surprised at just how many grants and scholarships are available today. In a lot of instances of course the sums of money available are reasonably small but nonetheless can be very useful as one part of your overall funding plan.
The next port of call ought to be federal loans through schemes such as Perkins loans and Stafford loans which are offered as both unsubsidized and subsidized loans. Perkins loans are particularly attractive because of their relatively low rate of interest but are also the hardest loans to get and require students to show particular financial need.
Unfortunately at this point although you will have begun to create your portfolio it is unlikely that this will provide you with enough funds and you will now need to start casting your net wider and will have two paths to follow.
If you are fortunate enough to have 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 actual cost of attending college. Student PLUS loans are subject to the guardian or parent having a reasonable credit history but the requirements are generally not as stringent as those applied by private lenders.
If you do not have a guardian or parent you can turn to or decide to go it alone then you will need to seek a loan from a private lender and precisely how easy this will be will depend very much on your personal credit history. In most cases lenders will be happy to grant you a loan as long as you have a good credit history and will ask for a cosigner if you have no credit history against which they can make their decision or have a poor credit history. In spite of this, with a growing number of people with a bad credit history nowadays there is also a growing number of private lenders who will offer loans without the requirement for a cosigner and so it is merely a matter of shopping around.
Student loans for bad credit without a need for a cosigner will naturally cost you more than a standard good credit loan but if you take your time and shop around carefully you will get a loan at a reasonable rather than extortionate interest rate.
Tags: scholarship, pell grants, college grants, college loans, , college funding, student loans
