Private Loans for All Occasions
The Sallie Mae Smart Option Student Loan and other general private loans are available for covering grad school, as well as business, law, medical, or dental school. There are also specialized private loans that can be used for medicine and law.
All federal loans and a lot of private loans pay the school directly, but some private loans disburse the money to the student so they can cover living expenses. Ask your lender for more details.
There are some loans for very specific parts of an educational program, such as the Bar Study Loan and the Residency and Relocation Loan.
Repayment:
As we mentioned in Student Loans II, there are many repayment plans available, especially for federal loans. The same ones apply for graduate loans. For private loans, under Sallie Mae there is now also the income-based repayment plan that works with the borrowers discretionary income in order to help them make their payments.
If you have difficulty making payments— even if it takes several calls and talking to different representatives—call your student loan company and work out an alternative repayment plan with them. As Erica says, “We want to work with our customers to find a repayment plan that works for them. We are successful when our customers are successful.”
Sallie Mae is now offering a repayment calculator to help borrowers figure out which plan fits best with their monthly budget.
**Grad school is an expensive and time-consuming endeavor that can yield huge rewards, but before you invest in more schooling, do your homework! Taking the time to learn all you can about student loans and how long it will take for your degree to pay for itself is the best prep course you can take before heading back into the classroom!
