How to find a lender in less than 10 seconds

Thank you for joining us today- I’m Bryanna Davis with InternationalStudentLoan.com and today we’re going to talk about how you can quickly find a lender that will work with you as an international student. If you already know what school you’re going to attend the next step is to figure out where your financial aid is going to come from, which is more than likely why you’re here today. Useful Pointerss are a great option for funding your education but it can sometimes feel like you’re searching for a needle in a haystack when trying to find a loan that works for you.

If you haven’t started searching for a lender yet, you might not even know where to start or what criteria to include. When performing your search, you have to find a lender that will work with you as an international student, and with your school. Not every lender will work with international students and not every lender will work with every school. Because of this it can complicate the Useful Pointers search process- which is why we created the loan finder tool. To find a lender all you need to do is enter in three basic pieces of information on yourself- then click “find my student loan” to see what lenders are available for you. To make sure you’re 100% clear on this process, I’m going to walk you through how to use the loan finder tool to see if there is an Useful Pointers available for you. Before we start, I want to point out that we will address questions in the end, so if you have any that come up please send them in. Let’s get started.

Ok, so when you visit www.internationalstudentloan.com this is what you will see. Right here on the right we have the loan finder tool- this is the tool that is going to help you quickly see if there is a lender available to you.

Now, we are going to go through a few different scenarios today so we can show each of you an example that will meet your specific situation. First, we are going to go through the tool as though we are a non-US citizen or resident studying at a US school. First, you must answer if you are a US citizen or resident- and by resident it is asking if you are a permanent resident, for example do you have a green card. If you are not a US citizen or resident, you will of course mark “no.”

Next question- it asks “Do you have a cosigner?” You will mark either yes you have a cosigner, or no, you don’t have a cosigner. If you’re sitting there trying to figure out what a co-signer even is, let’s take a second to address that. A co-signer is someone who essentially is joining the loan application with you. If you do not re-pay your student loan, the responsibility of loan repayment will fall on your co-signer. Your co-signer can’t be just anyone, there are a few requirements that they must meet. First, they have to be a US citizen or resident who has lived in the US for the past two years. Second, and they must have good credit history. You might be wondering “Do I have to have a cosigner for an Useful Pointers?” the answer is yes- if you are a non-US citizen studying inside the US, you do. So, we are going to say “yes” you have a cosigner.

Next, you will choose the state of the school you attend, then click find lender- and let’s see what we get. After you have this list populate, you can then click on each of the lenders so you can learn more about the terms and conditions and find the right lender for you. Every lender will have different terms and conditions so make sure you really do your research to compare.

Ok, now we are going to go through the tool as though we are a US citizen studying outside the US as a foreign enrolled student, meaning you’re directly enrolled in a school outside of the US, meaning you’re not doing a study abroad program through a US school.

So first step, are you a US citizen or resident? Mark “yes”.

Next, choose your state, you would mark “Foreign/Non-US”. Notice here that it doesn’t ask if you have a cosigner. The reason for this is that as a US citizen you aren’t required to have a cosigner to apply for an international student loan. However, just because it’s not required doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one. Having a co-signer can help ensure that you receive the loan and that you get the best interest rate possible.

Next, school name. Find the country your school is in, and the school name. Click the button and see what options you have. Once again, here you can view all of the benefits, terms and features to see if it’s a good option for you.

Third scenario, lets fill out the tool as though you are a US citizen studying abroad through your US school, so you’re enrolled through your US school, but spending the year overseas. You would choose “yes” you are a US citizen, the state that you will be studying in, and the name of the school you’re directly enrolled in- so your US school. Click find my student loan then your options will appear.

Last scenario- if you are a non-us citizen studying at a non-US school. Let’s walk through your options- So, US citizen, mark “no” For school state mark “foreign/non-us”. If your school is on the list find it and select it. As you can see we unfortunately do not have a loan option for you if you are a non-US citizen studying outside the US.

Now that we have gone through each of the scenarios- it should make a bit more sense on how you can find a lender that meets your situation so quickly. If you are going through the list of schools in any of these scenarios and you can’t find your school listed, this means that we do not have a lender that will work at your school. Also, if you do not have a co-signer as a non-US citizen, we will not have a lender that will work for you. So keep those items in mind.

If you need an Useful Pointers to help fund your studies- using this loan finder tool is a good place to start in your search. You can quickly see what lenders work with international students at your school and compare their terms to find the best one for you. If you use the tool and you don’t see an available lender or there is only one or two- check back again in the few days. New lenders are added all of the time.

Let’s take a few moments to address any questions that you have on finding a loan, and the loan finder tool.