Sallie Mae

BACKGROUND
Sallie Mae is the sister site to Sallie Mae’s award-winning College Answer site. While College Answer provides comprehensive and detailed explanations of the financing process, Sallie Mae is geared toward a more succinct explanation of college financing options, and with providing application and loan procurement tools.

It still offers tutorials, including “Planning and preparing for school,” “Finding loans to help you pay,” and “Financial services to get you started,” but it more clearly defines each loan’s terms, (both for borrowing and repayment), and includes categories not mentioned at College Answer.  For example, “Loans For International Students,” “Loans for Training,” “Being debt savvy,” and many others. The loan process is, once again, clearly outlined, but on this site, they further assist you with determining your insurance and credit needs, tutor you on investments and savings, provide information concerning co-signatures on loans, and help you, in every way possible, to assess your financial picture.

Sallie Mae then, is a practical financial management site that will help you re-evaluate your entire financial profile while you consider the financing options for your child’s college years. It is also the port from which you can manage the educational loans you procure. Thus, from this site, you can make payments, change your profile, view payment history and arrange (or change), automatic payment perimeters.

PRO
– You can procure any federally funded OR private loans you wish to from this site
– All loan perimeters are fully outlined so you are not in the dark about the terms
– If you still have questions after the tutorials, you can contact Sallie Mae for assistance
– Grant programs are as thoroughly outlined as loan programs

CON
– This site is busy with information. It may take repeated visits to digest it all.

EXPENSE
There is no fee associated with utilizing this site.

DEGREE PROGRAMS
Financial obligations are incurred in any degree program. This site is designed to help you procure funds for those expenses.

SCHOOLS
If schools are not equipped to accept Federal Student Aid and/or are not distributors of the Direct Loans available through the U.S. Board of Education, then procuring loans outside the institution becomes a necessity for tuition and other school fees. Sallie Mae helps with that endeavor.

STUDENT LIFE
This subject matter is only addressed insofar as student housing needs are part of the financial picture.

CONCLUSION
Sallie Mae picks up where her sister site, College Answer, leaves off. The site most definitely has a more commercial look, but this is appropriate to all the links and applications they provide in order to directly, and from one site, offer a wide array of financing options for college bound students and their parents.

Common Misspellings:
Sally Mae, Sallie May, Sally May, SallieMae