In this issue:
- Introduction
- Public Service Message
- Featured Sponsor: Alternative Student Loans
- Featured Article: Student Loan Re-Consolidation
- Featured Article: Scholarship Searches
- A Word from our Sponsors
- Privacy and Subscription Information
- Back Issues
- Sponsor this newsletter!
Welcome to the November 2004 issue of The Student Financial Aid News. November is all about choices, from the 2004 presidential election to choosing football teams to deciding how to budget your finances for the future. This November, we'll help you make great scholarship choices and even change choices made in the past with our new Right Rate Reconsolidation program.
Have you visited FinancialAidNews.com? The Financial Aid News web site provides you with the back issues of Financial Aid News, so that if you missed an issue or your email address unexpectedly changed, you'll still get to read the articles you need. As always, please share The Financial Aid News with your friends, family, and colleagues, by simply forwarding this message, or letting them know to subscribe by visiting www.FinancialAidNews.com today!
Enjoy this month's newsletter!
The Financial Aid News
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Quincy, MA 02169
For registered United States voters, on November 2, take a few minutes out of your day to vote. We don't endorse a candidate or party, but we do endorse the civic duty of voting. Exercise your right to vote on Tuesday, November 2, 2004.
Featured Sponsor: Alternative Student Loans
As you start to plan for the Spring Semester 2005, make AlternativeStudentLoan.com part of your plans. You can apply for up to $30,000 per year for undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education students (with good credit and a qualified co-signer), enough to bridge the gap between federal aid and tuition. Best of all, there's no need to deal with all the paperwork of the FAFSA or other financial aid forms. Visit today or call (866) 301-3637!
Featured Article: Student Loan Re-Consolidation
The Student Loan Network is breaking new ground this November with the Right Rate Reconsolidation Loan Program! For graduates who consolidated when interest rates were much higher than today's historic 39-year lows, reconsolidating has not been an option - until now.
The Right Rate Reconsolidation program allows graduates with high fixed-rate loan consolidations (such as the 8.25% consolidation rates in 1999 and 2000) to reconsolidate their loans and get new variable rates currently at 4.875%. These variable rate reconsolidations offer the new Right Rate Reconsolidation guarantee: your variable rate reconsolidation can never exceed your current fixed consolidation rate.
Who is eligible for the Right Rate Reconsolidation program? Graduates with $10,000 or more in federal student loans who have
- previously consolidated with the US Department of Education, or
- consolidated with a third party (federal student loan, federal student loan, etc.) and have new federal student loans
- high fixed interest rates (generally 7% or above)
New graduates who have loans that have not been consolidated already will save more money with regular federal student loan consolidation.
Learn more about the Right Rate Reconsolidation program, read frequently asked questions about the Right Rate Reconsolidation program, or request a free information packet today about student loan consolidation and Right Rate Reconsolidation!
Feature Article: Scholarship Searches
College scholarships are big money - billions of dollars each year available to students around the world, and the Internet has become the fastest way for students to locate additional funding for school. As 2005 approaches, more and more scholarships will become available for students searching for funding.
Why scholarships? Well, for one thing, you don't have to repay them. Scholarships are "free" money, in the sense that it's money given to you based on some criteria. A scholarship is generally awarded based on any number of arbitrary criteria, including:
- Financial Need
- Academic Achievement
- Athletic Achievement
- Public Service
- Citizenship & ethnicity
In this sense, scholarships are better than loans - both will fund your education, but loans must be repaid. Students who want to get the most bang for their buck should pursue as many scholarships as possible.
Paid or free?
One of the most contentious debates regarding scholarships is the multitude of free and paid scholarship search services online. Services ranging from free of charge to hundreds, even thousands of dollars abound - how do you choose which path is for you?
Consider these three key areas:
- Security. When you sign up for a scholarship search service, very often you will be questioned about personal financial information, everything ranging from what assets you currently have to how much debt you plan to carry. This is intimate data that, if shared, could easily be misused for identity theft. Be sure you know who has your information and what they do with it!
- Diversity. How many scholarship awards does the service have in its database? Are there various regional awards, like city and state awards? The larger a database is, the better your chances of finding an award that fits your specific needs; the more diverse a database is, the less competition you'll likely have from other students.
- Privacy. This is a counterpart to security. Consider how a service makes money. If it's a free service, does it make money by selling advertising, or does it have to sell its database as well? A legitimate free service will tell you exactly how they make their money and how they use your information. Paid services, while not free, have a more recognizable revenue model, and that means that paid services don't have to sell your profile to third parties to stay afloat.
When it comes to free, there's no free search service that can match regular Internet search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo. See our June 2004 issue for more details about how to perform scholarship searches using search engines. For international students, there's always IEFA and InternationalScholarships.com.
Among the paid services, we recommend the FinancialAidOfficer.com Scholarship Search Service for three main reasons:
- Security. Secure transaction processing and a secure database means your data is never at risk, never in the open for hackers to exploit.
- Diversity. 2.3 million awards, $14 billion, for US and International students.
- Privacy. The Financial Aid Officer scholarship search service provides a written guarantee that your personal information is never shared, sold, or distributed. The Financial Aid Officer scholarship search service operates entirely on the membership fees of its searchers, so it never has to resort to selling your information.
If you can't find the financial aid you're looking for online, try the FinancialAidOfficer.com Scholarship Search Service today.
And now a word from our sponsors...
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List your school, club, or organization for free!
Do you have a club or organization you want to let the world know about? Is your school a source of pride and you want to help it achieve greater recognition? Submit a free listing to the Edvisors Education Directory today, and help your school, club, or organization be listed in one of the largest education directories online!
Visit http://www.Edvisors.com for more!
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