Also in the news, Sallie Mae has been trying to buy AES/PHEAA. According to CBS MarketWatch, Sallie Mae offered $1 billion for PHEAA. What did PHEAA think? According to Elinor Taylor, chairman of the board of directors of PHEAA: [quote”>MP3 file”We have an obligation to protect the long-term interests of Pennsylvania students and to be wise enough to see through a get-rich-quick scheme designed to enrich shareholders, not the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” said Elinor Taylor, board chairman of the agency, in a statement. Taylor said the PHEAA “is not now …

According to various newswires, the corporation formerly known as Sallie Mae has completed its privatization, meaning that it is no longer a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), and is now wholly a private-sector company. What does this mean for students? Well, this is strictly conjecture on my part, but as a wholly-private company, my guess is that Sallie Mae will need to increasingly focus on serving its most important customers… … its shareholders. Don’t believe it? Look at the list of top shareholders: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=SLM Fidelity, Vanguard, State Street, Citigroup… these are not …

Financial aid is a lot like bread and butter. Stay with me here for a moment. Let’s say that you have a pile of bread slices and a tub of butter. The slices represent all the students who want to go to college but can’t afford to pay full price. The butter represents the federal student aid program – Pell Grants, Perkins Loans, Stafford Loans, student loan consolidation, PLUS loans, etc.
Why is it so hard to get federal student aid? Because you and the Department of Education have contrary goals. …

From time to time, we are asked if we have loans for things other than student loans for education, and the answer is… kind of. We work with a variety of partners to provide sensible consumer loans to customers; here’s a couple of links to our various “other” loans:
http://www.StudentPlatinum.com
http://www.studentloannetwork.com/mortgage/

There was an article today in the CS Monitor titled “Think you can’t afford college in 2005?”, in which the author made this assertion: [quote”>MP3 fileBut many schools don’t offer their own aid, so students will have to borrow more, including unsubsidized loans with less favorable rates.[/quote”>MP3 file In actuality, Subsidized and Unsubsidized Federal Stafford Loans have the same interest rates – 2.77% in school and in grace, 3.37% in repayment. What separates the two is that Subsidized loans have their interest paid for you by the government while you …

Use a professional preparation service to get your FAFSA in exactly on January 1. If you try to file a FAFSA with the Department of Education either online or by mail before January 1, 2005, it will be declined because processing hasn’t begun yet. By filing with a professional preparation service, it will be loaded and transmitted as soon as the doors open, putting you as close to the front of the financial aid line as you can get. Visit: http://www.FAFSAapplication.com today!

The Student Financial Aid Newsletter for January 2005 has gone out, and is available here:
http://www.financialaidnews.com/jan2005.php
This is a great issue, with 10 hot tips for maximizing your federal financial aid with the FAFSA, as well as four [B”>MP3 filefull tuition scholarships[/B”>MP3 file to help you find the education you’re looking for. If you haven’t gotten it yet, read it on the site…