Wachovia anyone?

[SanchoPanzo]

Is anyone using Wachovia? They have some of the best rates that I've seen for Stafford and GradPLUS.

Stafford: No Origination fee + up to 3.5% in auto-debit and on-time payment
http://www.wachovia.com/personal/page/0,,325_496_8292,00.html

GradPLUS: 0.6% interest rate reduction immediately after first disbursement + 3% rebate 6 months after final disbursement
http://www.wachovia.com/personal/page/0,,325_496_9159,00.html

I think T.H.E. has a better GradPLUS loan (I have not seem their Stafford) but they may not loan to students at my school

[Apples and Oranges]

Hey -- yeah I was just doing my research and I think I'm going to go with Wachovia as well for my GradPLUS... T.H.E looked promising but they don't loan to students at my school either...

Have you gone through the application process yet? How did it go?

[chonralda]

I am using Wachovia for my stafford for this yr, and likely all 3. Their gradplus was not as competitive as student loan xpress, so i didnt use them twice (which seems common - rarely do people have same lender for both programs).

[SanchoPanzo]

Regarding T.H.E. not loaning to students at your school, I assume you concluded this based on your school not being listed on their site? If this is the case, you may still be able to get your loan through them. After not seeing my school listed on their site, I emailed and this was their response

T.H.E. offers both GradPLUS and Stafford loans for students at your school.  You may apply online or by phone for the Stafford loans.  Your school has not yet set up processing preferences for the GradPLUS loan, so if you wish to apply for this loan type, you must complete a paper application which can be downloaded from our website. In both cases, you should submit the signed Master Promissory Notes to your school's financial aid office once you have completed your applications.

Since then, I’ve crunched some more numbers and looked at other lenders and it appears that I can get better slightly rates for GraduatePLUS from Citibank and for Stafford from MEFA (http://www.mefa.org/). MEFA loans are only available to students attending in Massachusetts. I will likely select these since in addition to having better rates, my school lists them on the financial aid site.

I have not gone through the application process yet, though.

By the way, many of the loan products are very similar. After crunching the numbers for my loan, the rates from MEFA, T.H.E. and Wachovia turned out to be very similar. Using a 5-Year repayment period, T.H.E cost $160 more than MEFA and Wachovia cost $700 more than MEFA. The difference was more significant when I used a 10-years payment period.

[sea dream]

hey SanchoPanzo, could you confirm for me that MEFA is better for our school than wachovia? i guess i'm having a hard time seeing it but i'm just eyeballing the reductions. this is probably a totally dumb question, but i was starting to get excited on wachovia until i just read your post. lol

wachovia: http://www.wachovia.com/personal/page/0,,325_496_8292_8315,00.html

[SanchoPanzo]

hey SanchoPanzo, could you confirm for me that MEFA is better for our school than wachovia? i guess i'm having a hard time seeing it but i'm just eyeballing the reductions. this is probably a totally dumb question, but i was starting to get excited on wachovia until i just read your post. lol

wachovia: http://www.wachovia.com/personal/page/0,,325_496_8292_8315,00.html

This is correct. I found that for a 10-year payment period, MEFA is better. However, if you intend to pay your loan back in say 3 years, Wachovia appears to be the less expensive option (not necessarily better. See below). This is because whereas MEFA has interest rate rebates, Wachovia offers principal reductions.

I used the loan calculator at http://www.variousbits.com/loan.php I logged in as guest/guest and created sea_MEFA and sea_Wachovia (you can log in to loans I added). This is what I got for the 3 loan repayment periods I used. These numbers reflect total payments.

               MEFA        Wachovia
10 years  $15185     $16043 
5 years   $13655       $13785
3 years   $13041       $12981

Now, these numbers are very similar. However, if you consider that MEFA is listed on the school website (perhaps a preferred lender?) and that once you achieve the on-time payment rebates with MEFA you never loose them, I felt MEFA was the better choice.

[sea dream]

thank you so much, SanchoPanzo !