| Unsteady Rates | 5.00% to 11.62% |
| Fixed Rates | 5.49% to 12.87% |
| Loan Amounts | $1,000 up to the total cost of attendance |
| Loan Terms | 10 years |
Loan Eligibility
To qualify for a student loan from Sallie Mae, you ought to meet the following requirements:
- Borrowers must be the age of majority (18 in most states).
- Borrowers must be U.S. citizens or stable residents. DACA students or foreign residents can apply if they have a U.S. citizen co-signer.
- You or your cosigner ought to have sufficient income.
- You or your cosigner must pass a credit check.
Is Loan Prequalification Available?
Unfortunately, Sallie Mae does not bid loan prequalification. To find out if you’d qualify for a loan and to see what rate you’d get, you have to fill out a full loan application and suffer a hard credit inquiry.
Loan Fees
Sallie Mae doesn’t charge origination fees or prepayment penalties. Even so, there is a late fee if you miss a payment, 5% of the missed payment amount, up to a maximum of $25. If a payment is returned to you, there is a $20 reappeared check fee.
Loan Discounts
If you sign up for automatic payments, Sallie Mae will reduce your interest rate by 0.25%.
Repayment Elections
Aside from the standard principal-and-interest repayment method, in which you pay both principal and interest right away, level when you’re in school, Sallie Mae has three other repayment options:
- Deferred – With deferred repayment, you don’t make payments while the undergraduate is in school and during the grace period. Deferred repayment is available for undergraduate, graduate, medical school, dental middle school, MBA, and law school student loans. Parent student loans and career training loans aren’t eligible.
- Fixed – Call of a fixed repayment plan, you pay $25 per month while you’re in school. Once you graduate and after your grace era, you begin paying the principal and interest. Career training, undergraduate, graduate, medical school, dental school, MBA, and law circle loans are eligible for fixed repayment.
- Interest – If you choose the interest-only repayment option, you’ll make monthly interest payments while in votaries and during the grace period. Parent, career training, undergraduate, graduate, medical school, dental school, MBA, and law secondary student loans qualify for interest repayment.
Other student loans, such as residency loans and bar exam credits, don’t require you to make payments while you’re enrolled at least half-time and during your grace period.
Sallie Mae does tender some extra benefits to borrowers. You’ll get four free months (worth $100) of Chegg Study, an online tutoring program that sells study support for any subject and hundreds of textbooks. You also get free access to your
Are Cosigners Required?
Sallie Mae doesn’t make you to have a co-signer. However, it strongly recommends that you add one to your application. According to the company, students are nearly four tempi more likely to be approved with a co-signer than if they applied on their own. As noted above, Sallie Mae does budget you to apply to have your co-signer removed after a year
Forbearance and Loan Discharge Options
If you’re having provoke affording your payments, Sallie Mae may be able to offer you
Length of Time for Loan Approval and Disbursement
The time between advance approval and loan disbursement can be lengthy. Once your loan is approved, Sallie Mae will send a certification call to your school. Many schools only certify requests 30 days before enrollment begins. The same if you applied for a loan months in advance, you may not hear back about the funds you need until a few weeks before ready begins.
Once the school certifies the request, Sallie Mae will disburse the funds directly to the school. Any extra well-heeled that’s left over, known as a student loan refund, will be issued to you.
Is Student Loan Refinancing Readily obtainable?
Customer Service
Sallie Mae is its own loan servicer. The Annual Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Private Teaching Loan Ombudsman does not include Sallie Mae in its roundup of complaints about private student loan lenders. On Trustpilot.com, Sallie Mae has justified a few reviews and a 2.6 TrustScore (out of a possible 6). Complaints center on loan terms and customer service.
Customer support is present by calling 855-756-5626. Support staff is available during the available times:
- Monday through Thursday: 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. ET
- Friday: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET
Buyer service is also available via chat. We used this feature to ask a few questions about borrower eligibility and loan designations and found the agents to be very responsive and knowledgeable. We had answers to our questions within minutes.
Apply for a Sallie Mae Student Accommodation
If you still need money to pay for school, you can then apply for a Sallie Mae student loan. To complete the online application, you’ll be dressed to enter the following details about yourself:
- Permanent Address
- Social Security Number (of both borrower and co-signer, if right)
- School Information
- Requested Loan Amount
- Employment Information (including employer name and income)
- Financial Low-down (including bank account numbers and monthly mortgage or rental payments)
- Name and Contact Information for Two Personal Telephones
Once you submit your application, you could receive your results in as little as 15 minutes.
Is a Sallie Mae Advance the Right Fit for You?
College costs have skyrocketed in recent years, and federal direct subsidized and direct unsubsidized credits have strict caps on how much you can borrow. If you need additional money to pay for school, using a private student advance from a lender such as Sallie Mae can be a good option.
On the plus side, Sallie Mae offers a wide range of advances, with multiple repayment options, for students of all types. It also has loan forbearance and discharge programs that rival favorably to federal loan discharge policies, and it allows you to apply for a cosigner release in just 12 months, background it apart from other lenders. However, on the annoyance side, Sallie Mae doesn’t allow you to get a rate quote sooner than you apply.
Whether Sallie Mae’s interest rates are more competitive than other lenders, including the federal oversight’s, is a more complicated question. Much depends on your financials. While Sallie Mae’s lowest rates are lower than the fed’s, you’ll as likely as not only qualify for them if you have an excellent credit score—otherwise, you’ll probably end up paying about the same or flatten more. The lender does offer variable interest rates on its loans, unlike the government—and that can be an advantage in a declining-interest-rate atmosphere.
Methodology
Investopedia is dedicated to providing consumers with unbiased, comprehensive reviews of student loan lenders. We poised over 45 data points across more than 15 lenders—including interest rates, charges, loan amounts, and repayment terms—to ensure that our content helps users make the right borrowing steadfastness for their education needs.