About
collegeloanconsultant.com

collegeloanconsultant.com was born the day after I was tempted to throw my keyboard through the window after spending hours search for (what should have been) simple information about school loans.

I did not pitch my keyboard. (Windows are a pain to fix; believe me, with six kids, I know.)

I knew nothing about building a site, but I knew where to find the tools I needed to build one that anyone could find.

So I did. My original motivation was frustration; I am not a novice at research- people pay me to do internet research. (I've been an expert on [COMPENSATED AFFILIATE LINK] JustAnswer- a fantastic information site, for a few years.) Government education sites are no mystery to me either- I also write statewide standardized tests (end of the year exams) for about a dozen states.

The information I was searching for was for a client- not for my own family. However it was easy to imagine myself as a parent, already upset about the prospect of loans and not being able to find out something that was vital to my family's decisions. Most of the internet sites I looked at were either useless and self-serving, or out-of-date and confusing.

My goal is to present information in a clear and logical format, to include important points that are often overlooked, and to be up-to-date on the latest developments.

The college loan picture has changed dramatically since I started the site.

In 2007, it was a buyer's market. Lenders were competing with each other to offer students the best deals. Now these lenders are mostly gone and the ones who are left have priced their loans out of most students' reach. The college loan picture is changing almost every day.

No matter what happens with college loans in the next few months or years, you can come here to find the information that's really important to students and their families.

The single most important thing that every student needs to know before they take out a college loan is that once you take out that loan, you have to see it through and get your degree! Three quarters of all defaulters are people who have dropped out before graduation.

Not getting your degree when you owe money for that purpose is a recipe for failure.

On this site, I recommend various products, some of which are free to use- some of which are not. I sometimes receive compensation for different actions by visitors who click on these links. These actions may include:

• visiting a site
• filling out a form
• buying a product (or selling a product like textbook buybacks)
• joining a membership

I also recommend various products for which I receive no compensation. (The Sallie Mae scholarship tool and the Adobe reader come to mind.) All the products and services I recommend are ones that I feel provide value to students, graduates and their parents.

Any time I provide a link to a site where I might get paid a commission, I indicate it with: [COMPENSATED AFFILIATE LINK]

Third-party ads (such as ads by Google) are not selected by me and if you see one about a product or service I recommend elsewhere, it is a coincidence.