<p>Okay this is all hypothetical. At least for now. Let's imagine you're applying to a school that doesn't offer financial aid for international students and you have 0 opportunities of getting a scholarship. The school you apply to accepts you and you intend on going there. It has a tuition fee of $40,000 a year. Now where do you get the money? What institutions offer loans or any money for this kind of case. </p>
<p>I'm asking first of all out of curiosity and second of all because this might be what happens to me in the near future. Thanks for all your help.</p>
<p>You will generally need an American cosigner because international students are too high risk customers for banks. A bank has no means to collect money from an unwilling customer who is overseas, and the chances that international students will eventually leave the country are very very high. Colleges are usually not interested in giving you any loans themselves because the prime reason for most colleges to accept international students is because they are full-paying customers. (Someone from Boston University called international applicants “money cows.”)</p>
<p>Curiosity question here, if you have no opportunities for merit scholarships, than I would believe academically you are not highly ranked, thus, acceptance would be slim and the conversation is moot.</p>
Many colleges don’t have merit scholarships to begin with. And even if they do, not qualifying for a merit scholarships means not being in the top 5% of their student body. Someone has to fill the bottom 95%, you know?</p>
<p>that’s what I mean. That college doesn’t offer merit based scholarships. I have an American cosigner. Do you know of any specific banks that offer loans? And if this does come to happen, should a full loan be taken out for all 4 years or do I apply for a loan each year?</p>
<em>head scratch</em> Every single one of them??? Seriously now, I am not going to advertise one bank over another. If you have no idea where to start, why don’t you discuss your options your college’s financial aid office or your cosigner or just google “student loans”? But congratz on the cosigner That puts you in a more favorable position than most of us.</p>
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I would do it one year at a time. You might decide to graduate early, transfer, study abroad, get sick, etc and not need the money. Or you might discover that you need more money than you initially expected because tuition and cost of living increase every year. (On average by 7% a year, which means that you pay about 4.5 times the price of the first year’s tuition.) And you probably would not want to have $100,000 sitting in a bank account unused while accruing interest. 10% yearly interest sum up pretty quickly…</p>
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They can, but they must have a favorable credit history (just like a citizen). Someone who just recently entered the country won’t be accepted as a cosigner, and neither would a college-aged teen or someone who has a lot of debt himself.</p>
<p>How would you be paying off your loan? The best (least expensive ) make you pay monthly interest fees and then give you 6 months to start paying principal and interest payments. If you do find a bank that will lend your cosignor half a million to finance a foreigh students studies, you should take all the money at once since you they may not lend you money teh 2nd year or some other year. I believe they dont give you money at once, but disburse to the college once or twice a year.</p>
<p>Maybe your country has some agency. Sweden has CSN where you could get 24400$ yearly as maximum. Then there’s the British Student Loan Company, giving out loans without interest. Check that out first.</p>
<p>sorry to bring this old topic back up but I have a question left. </p>
<p>If I apply for an international student loan with Sallie Mae for example, with an American cosigner, am I guaranteed that I will get the loan? If not how high are the chances not getting the loan?</p>
Your chances depend on how credit-worthy your cosigner is. If your cosigner has a decent credit score, your chances of getting a loan are very good. And you do want a co-signer with a high credit score or your interest rates will be sky-high. (SallieMae’s website suggests that their interest rates are between 4% and 14% + 1-month LIBOR. The average LIBOR is between 3% and 4%, so you are looking at average interest rates between 7% and 18%. The more credit-worthy your cosigner, the lower your interest rate.)</p>
That puts you in a more favorable position than most of us.</p>