Shopping for loans

[john jacob]

Says it all. How/where to shop for law school loans? (btw, to the wiimote troll, after stafford, I'm looking at about 10k which needs to be covered. Do the math for my 3 yr COA)

[wtracing]

If you use all government backed loans (stafford and Grad PLUS) all comapnies are essentially the same.  They all offer a reduction for auto-debit later, etc. I'd use some your school recommends so that your loans are processed more quickly to be honest.  Odds are you are going to consolidate into a fed consolidation loan after graduation anyway and they're all the same interest rate now, so you can't really go wrong IMO. if you're going private loans to supplement, that is a whole different story.

[Bulldog86]

It looks to me like a lot of the good deals I was seeing a couple months ago are gone. That said, while you may consolidate later, why not get the best deal you can now? Unfort., there aren't many...

From what I gathered, and this excludes state-govt backed lenders, school-specific plans and credit unions (since none of those options worked for me -- they might for you!), nearly all banks are offering a .25% rate reduction for auto-debit. The only (!) bank I can find that offers more right now is Citi (StudentLoan.com), which also gives you a .5% rate reduction when you enter repayment.

This is true for both Stafford and GradPLUS loans. All rate reductions are off of the federal max. In other words, a Stafford with no discounts is 6.8%; most banks will do it at 6.55%; Citi is 6.05%. Discounts generally are revoked if you don't pay each payment on time.

I went ahead and applied with Citi, although I'd be interested to see if anyone has found any better deals...

(Oh, and the rate for everybody is still 6.8 while in school, which makes a difference on the Unsubsidized Stafford and PLUS loans. The reductions all take effect on repayment.)