Obtaining Student Loans With No Cosigner

By Author: Donald Saunders
Total Articles: 84
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As education costs continue to rise from year to year it is getting increasingly difficult to source the funds necessary for college and a lot of students spend more time worrying about raising the funds needed than they do working at their studies. As if this were not bad enough in itself far too many students find that once they have left college they are left with so much debt that it quite simply drags them down and will take many years to pay off. If this seems to be a grim picture then for all too many students the problem of funding a college education is compounded by a need to raise the necessary money without having a cosigner for their loans.

Nowadays college funding is not merely a matter of turning to one single source of finance for the majority of students but is a matter of building a portfolio of funds from various different sources.

The first port of call for every student should be to try to find scholarships and grants. A lot of students simply overlook this source of essentially free money completely and yet you would be surprised at just how many scholarships and grants are on offer nowadays. ...
... In many instances of course the amounts of money in question are relatively small but nonetheless can be extremely useful as a part of your total funding plan.

The next port of call ought to be federal loan funding through schemes like Stafford and Perkins loans which can be obtained as both subsidized and unsubsidized loans. Perkins loans especially attractive because of their low interest rate but are also the hardest loans to get and require students to show financial need.

Regrettably 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 funds and you will have to start casting your net wider and here you will have two roads 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 find yourself and the overall cost of attending college. Student PLUS loans are subject to the guardian or parent having a reasonable credit rating but the requirements are generally not as strict as those which would be applied by a private lender.

If you have not got a guardian or parent you can turn to or simply decide to go it alone then you will have to find a loan from a private lender and exactly how easy that will be will depend to a large degree on your personal credit history. In most cases private lenders will be quite happy to offer you a loan if you have a good credit rating and will ask for a cosigner if you do not have a credit history against which they can make their decision or have a bad credit history. Nevertheless, with more and more people with a poor credit history today there is also an increasing number of private lenders who are prepared to offer loans without the need for a cosigner so it is merely a case of shopping around.

A poor credit loan with no requirement for a cosigner will of course be more expensive than a standard good credit loan but if you take your time and shop around carefully you will find a loan at a reasonable rather than exorbitant rate of interest.