At some point, I asked Mike why the school’s financial aid office couldn’t just tell us what the best bank for us was. Apparently there was this scandal back in the ‘80s that prevents them from doing that.
So we were on our own.
After some Google-ing, I came up with three contenders:
- MOHELA
- Wachovia Securities
- Bank of America
All of the companies I researched had the same fees, same repayment schedule and other various details were the same as well. Since graduate school loans are backed by the federal government, this makes sense! But it makes choosing a loan servicer hard, because there’s basically no difference.
MOHELA is the biggest loan servicer in Missouri, and happened to hold Husband’s undergraduate loans. Unfortunately, the customer service that he has experienced over the years and my experience with their phone responders didn’t give me the most confidence in them.
I truly think that whichever company you decide to go with, you have to trust them. You’re going to be working with them for a long time, and spending a lot of money with them. You gotta have confidence in their business.
I think I used access group one year and then my second year they advised me to go with sallie mae because with sallie mae if you make your payments after graduation your rate will go down.... I think my school got in trouble for even advising us of this.
ReplyDeleteEither way I was happy with both loan companies - but for convenience purposes I think I should have just gone with one company. (I ended up having THREE by graduation because my final semester was as a visiting student and they had DIRECT LOANS there so you don't even get to choose the lender).
I went with Sallie Mae, they have been okay.
ReplyDelete