I apologize I suffer from a lack of responsible parent-types to advise me in situations like this. God bless the internet right?

My undergrad degree was financed with Stafford loans & disbursed via the US Dept. of Education (Direct Loans).

I was just accepted into American Military University for my Masters and am completing the financial aid process. I was approved for more Stafford loans, however they want me to choose a private lender instead of Direct Loans (not sure why, still trying to get an answer).


These are my options they give me:

Sallie Mae

- 0.25% percentage point interest rate reduction for making payments using automatic debit.1
- 24/7 online account management.
- Six-month grace period when no payments are required immediately following your graduation or dropping to less-than-half-time status.2
- Expert servicing from the nation's leading student loan company.
- Several repayment options are available.
- No prepayment penalty.
- APR "as low as 5.48%"


Regions Bank

- 1% Origination Fee
- 1% Default Fee
- 7% loan credit after making the first 36 on-time payments
- PLUS 3% Origination Fee
- PLUS 1% Default Fee
- APR "as low as 4.23%"



Fifth Third Bank

- 1% Origination Fee
- 1% Default Fee
- 0.53 percentage point interest rate reduction after making the first on-time payment.
- 0.53 percentage point interest rate reduction for automatic debit
- PLUS 3% Origination Fee
- PLUS 1% Default Fee
- APR "as low as 4.42%"



Nellie Mae

- 1% Origination Fee
- 1% Default Fee
- 3.3% loan credit or cash back after making the first 33 on-time payments
- 0.50 percentage point interest rate reduction for automatic debit
- PLUS 3% Origination Fee
- PLUS 1% Default Fee
- APR "as low as 4.37%"





Sallie Mae is the most recognizable name to me, however in huge bold letters @ the bottom of the screen it says "SALLIE MAE RESERVES THE RIGHT TO MODIFY OR DISCONTINUE LOAN PROGRAMS AND BORROWER BENEFITS AT ANY TIME WITHOUT NOTICE." So that raises a couple red flags LOL.


Does anyone have any experience with the above lenders? Anything important to pull from that data besides the APR?



THANKS A BILLION!!!!!!!!!

I looked at all the different websites and your choice is SM. Nellie Mae is a SM company. Fifth Third and Regions both use SM. So it appears you are going to be with or affliated with SM no matter what.

In this economy, you are best signing up with SM anyways.So many lenders are pulling out that if you sign up with Regions or Fifth Third, if they decide to pull the plug on student loans, they will probably end up selling their entire portfolio to SM. Any perks they offered are gone.

Your interest rate is going to be the same regardless of who you borrow with...6.8% for staffords. Plus I would assume once you graduate you will want to consolidate these with your other loans with the Direct Loan Program.

I cannot thank you enough, you've been such a huge help!

I just applied for and got Discover Student Loans - NO origination fee NO gurantor fee! cant beat that + .25 point reduction upon auto-payment set up

No different than what Sallie Mae is offering. However if Discover decided to leave the student loan arena and sells off their portfolio, the reduction goes out the window.