Should You Take Out College Loans With No Cosigner?

Cheap student loans without a cosigner can be tricky to find but it is certainly not impossible so long as you know where to look.

It is usually recommended that before you even think about taking out a college loan you try and find money for college which will not need any repayments and which can often be found in the shape of bursaries or grants. Your first enquiry should be with the college you wish to attend and then you must search the internet for grants such as PELL grants. Any type of grant or scholarship you can get will reduce the amount you have to make an application for in the form of a loan.

When you have exhausted these options, your next step ought to be to start looking at government loans and this essentially means Stafford and Perkins loans. These loans which you may be eligible for dependent on your fiscal circumstances are given with a relatively low rate of interest and advantageous repayment terms.

Stafford federal loans can supply student loans without a cosigner and do not need any form of background credit suitability check. You can either make an application for a subsidized or unsubsidized loan with the former being ‘needs based’. Subsidized loans also means that the government will pay all your interest while you are attending university and then permit you up to 10 years after graduation to pay off your loan. The loan limits are primarily based on your year level at university and whether or not you are viewed as being either a dependent or independent student.

Perkins loans are somewhat more difficult to come by as they are only given to students who have exceptional fiscal need. The Perkins loan is issued by the college itself although the money is provided by the government. These loans are all subsidized and don’t need the student to pay any interest while attending university and, once more, have a 10 year repayment period.

When you’ve exhausted these options, and presuming that you have been incapable of finding anybody who is ready or able to stand as guarantor for you, you will finally need to have a look for a college loan which does not require a cosigner. It should be stressed this is a last resort option and if you can qualify for a loan based on your own good credit record or with a cosigner this is clearly a better choice. However, this may not be possible and a private loan without a cosigner could be your only option.

Many lenders are prepared to issue loans without a cosigner but this constitutes a higher than usual risk to the bank which will be reflected in the interest levied on the loan and the overall terms and conditions of the loan. This is something that you’ve got to look at very closely indeed as it is so easy to take out a loan of this nature and find yourself unable to make the required payments after just a couple of short months.

Remember also that repayments will almost always begin inside one month of the loan being drawn down and you’ll need to think about just where you will get the money to make these payments. One mistake that all too many student make is to take a loan that is bigger than they actually need so they can use funds from the loan itself to make their payments. This almost always ends in disaster. If you are going to apply for this form of loan then you have to have some type of income from which to make the payments on the loan and this usually means taking some type of employment while you are at college.

The difficulty with student loans without cosigner support is often not getting the loan in the first place but repaying it and that is something that you need to consider really carefully before heading down this particular road.