Understanding What It Take to Get A Student Loan Without A Cosigner

Getting a student loan without a cosigner can be done, you just have to know what you are doing. The majority of college students don't however know how to get a student loan when they don't have a cosigner. The first thing you need to do before anything else is to evaluate where you stand in terms of credit and income. By getting a grip on your credentials you will then know what kind of student loans you should apply for, and this will allow you to get the maximum amount of funding when you don't have a cosigner to apply with.

Student loans fall into one of two major categories, and are classified as either federal student loans, or private student loans. Federal student loans are based off of need and therefore do not require that you have good credit or a cosigner. Private student loans are approved with regard to your credit, and without good credit you're going to have to have to provide a credit-worthy cosigner to get an approval. Applying to a private lender with bad credit and no cosigner is a waste of time as most private lenders are very stringent with their policies in regard to approving student-borrowers. Trying to get approved by a private lender is thus not a wise move when your credit is bad and you have no cosigner, and should be avoided if this is the reality of your situation.

This is why it is crucial for you to get an idea of where you stand in terms of your credit before you decide to go out and apply to a private lender. Having good credit essentially means two things, having a respectable credit score, and having a significant credit history. If you don't have both in order then your likelihood of getting an approval isn't very good, and you're most likely going to have to come up with a cosigner to get approved. The cosigner you find must also have good credit and a significant credit history, as most private lenders will scrutinize your cosigner the same way they evaluate your credentials. If the cosigner you submitted and yourself don't have the appropriate credentials, then you'll most likely get a quick denial by most private lenders.

Virtually all private lenders will want to see that you have a cosigner if your credit isn't good enough, and looking for a private student loan without a cosigner is not going to typically yield that many results. If you can't improve your credit or come up with a cosigner then you best option to get a student loan without a cosigner is to look to federal students loans in place of private student loan funding. Federal student loans are based off of need, and not exclusively just credit, and are therefore a better way to go when you can't come up with a cosigner. Federal student loans will hardly ever require that you provide a cosigner, and the key to getting approved is filling out a FAFSA application on-time at some point during the winter time and in a complete fashion. The FAFSA is the government's universal application for federal student aid, and by filling it out you will automatically be making yourself eligible for variety of federal student loans that are currently available.