<p>Is there any reason to pick one lending institution over another if you do not have any relationship with any of them? From what I gather, all of them are 6.1% (current year) but the fees are a little different. Do they or can they give you a better rate than the 6.1 since they check your credit rating? How do you go about comparing them?</p>
<p>Thanks.......</p>
<p>Sometimes the college will have a closer relationship with a particular institution, which simplifies the paperwork and funds transfer. You might check with the financial aid office of the school the student attends.</p>
<p>FYI, the government recently voted to raise the PLUS loan interest rate (to 8.5%, I think).</p>
<p>The bank we use (a local small town bank) does not do plus loans. On the financial aid packet forms, they list 5 or 6 (US Bank, BofA, etc.) but that is all the info. We need to take in a MPN when we meet with the FA office so I was trying to figure out who to use.</p>
<p>I was told college will send us all info when we going to look for loans. Schools seems to have preferred institutions they like to deal with and some of the deals they will arrange for you themselves which makes whole processing easier.</p>
<p>Even if they raise the rate, our mortgage is at 4.7 (don't want to lose this!), our home equity line is now about 7.5 with no cap, so if the PLUS loan can't go over 9 (or can that change yearly too?), and with a possible lower rate with discounts (excellent credit score), it might be more attractive. Also, hubby could retire in 2 years (but only 55) so we don't want to take out principal of our retirement savings. We were told a long time ago, you can borrow to pay college, you can't borrow to pay for retirement.</p>
<p>while the college may have an informal or formal agreement with lender- that can change. A recent PLUS loan was sold to another lender- we originally picked the lender because they gave a discount to direct deposit, the new lender has no such benefit.</p>