<p>I am an international student and it says as long as you have a co signer you can borrow money, but how much??</p>
<p>“It” says? A lender will assess your co-signer’s creditworthiness and income and decide if a loan will be made and, if so, for how much. But you should be first be concerned about how much you SHOULD borrow in light of your future employment and the burden of repayment. In addition, you need to be concerned about whether your co-signer will be approved for loans for all four years. And of course any co-signer must understand that he or she may have full responsibility to repay the loans if you are unable or unwilling to do so. It’s not something to be taken on lightly.</p>
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For private student loans, the borrowing limit will be the student’s cost of attendance minus their other financial aid.</p>
<p>And very likely the international student should look at loan sources from THEIR country. </p>
<p>WHERE are you getting your info?</p>
<p>For an int’l student to get a loan, he needs an AMERICAN co-signer. Otherwise the student may just go back to his home country and never pay. The bank needs assurance of having an American that it can go after for that loan. </p>
<p>Frankly, I think it’s too risky to borrow that much, and it’s really “way too much” to expect a non-parent to co-sign your loans. </p>
<p>He needs an American cosigner for loans in the U.S. If he is looking at typical U.S. student loans…the federally funded ones…he can’t take those at all.</p>
<p>If he is looking at STUDENT loans without a cosigner even in his OWN country, he may come up empty handed.</p>
<p>I agree it is likely you will have to borrow in your home country unless you have someone in the US with a good credit rating that will cosign for you. A cosigner with no ties to the US would not be a good risk for a lender as they would have no way recovering their money if the payments were not made. </p>
<p>When someone cosigns a loan it means they are equally liable for the loan. This means that, while the lenders will generally go after you first for payments, they are legally entitled to go after the cosigner at any time. It is a HUGE thing to be a cosigner - the loans show up as debt on the cosigner’s credit records just as if they have borrowed the money themselves (because they have in reality) and may impact their ability to borrow for other purposes. Any late payments by the student can damage the cosigner’s credit rating before they are even aware there is a problem. And the cosigner is on the hook to pay the loan if the student fails to do so, if the student dies, or if the lender just chooses to make them do so. I personally would never cosign a loan. Too much risk and too little control.</p>