How to find Apply for Student Loans

What do I mean by the best money? Well – there student loans, scholarships, fellowships, grants, and other forms of funds for college. It's really hard for the average high school student, parents, and college students to know where to find money for college beyond federal financial aid.

Any student who plans to apply for student loans should look into a comparison site. A site like offers "one-stop-shopping" for students in need of loans, grants, scholarships and all other forms of financial aid. Once a student fills out pertinent information about themselves, the degree they are seeking, and the school they plan to attend, they will receive a list of the best lenders for their needs as well as the ability to sift through a thousand scholarship sources and get lots of information about what they need to know about financial aid.

All students should fill out the FAFSA first before exploring alternate forms of funding for their education. That's the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. It's a long form and students need to have either their own income tax returns or their parent's, or both, to fill it out. But in the long run, it's worth it. It will tell a student exactly how much and what kind of federal loans and grants that student can get.

Believe it or not, around 8 million eligible students each year fail to fill out the FAFSA. This means that they are automatically ineligible for all federal grants and loans.

Federal loans for which students can apply fall into the category of Unsubsidized and Subsidized Stafford Loans. The interest rates on these are 4.5% for subsidized loans to 6.8% for unsubsidized loans. There's also the Federal PLUS loan for parents with an interest rate of 7.9%. These are all available directly through the federal government's Federal Direct Loan Program that was instituted on July 1, 2010.

There are lots of good things to be said about federal student loans.

• The interest rate on a student's loan stays the same for the life of the loan. This is not necessarily true of private loans.

• Some private lenders advertise rates that look better than the rates for PLUS loans. However, once the paperwork is done, parents may not qualify for those rates. Impeccable credit is a necessity for the best rates. This makes the PLUS loan a better option for parents who have a spotty credit record.

• Unlike some private loans, federal loans offer long repayment periods and are flexible. If a student cannot begin paying back college loans on time, federal loans offer either reduced payments or a deferment on payments before a student must start repayment of loans.

On the other hand, federal aid does not necessarily cover all of a student's financial needs. That's when private student loans can come into play. Private loans are a great addition to federal loans but a student should always take the maximum money available from federal sources before they begin looking into private sources.