Does applying for a few Private Parent/Student loans at Different companies in an Effort to get the Best Deal have a Negative impact on your Credit Score. My Intention Would be to only move forward with One Company that offers the best program and Interest rate.
Why would you need to APPLY for a bunch of loans to figure out the best deal? You should be able to get this info without actually applying for the loans.
Only apply for the best deal loan.
The interest rate offered vary & depends on your credit which is determined when you fill out the application. Most of them just give you a range as low as X as high as Y when you window shop.
Yes. Every time you apply for credit, your score will take a hit of 5-15 points. You can ask the bank to do a ‘soft pull’ which is usually the merchant doing the pull for advertising, but they might be able to give you an idea of what the loan would be if you were to apply. Some lenders will do it, some won’t.
I can’t speak to college loans specifically, but with mortgage loans I recall that a few (small number) in a short time period didn’t affect much, as it was known that one needed to shop around.
Check out credible.com. They claim that you can compare student loan interest rates and get your actual rates without affecting your credit score. They didn’t exist when we were shopping for private loans for our D’s college education.
FWIW, we have used Wells Fargo Private Student Loans and despite some questionable business practices in other Wells Fargo Bank products, we found that their student loan division gave us competitive interest rates, their customer service has been excellent, and they were quite easy to deal with through the application process. If you have an existing business relationship with Wells Fargo, they offer a .25 percent discount in the interest rate, and an additional discount when you set up direct debit automated loan repayments after graduation.
We have been making loan repayments while our D is in college to pay off accrued interest and start paying down principal. Their website is easy to use and as a parent, you can allocate payments exactly as you want among multiple student loans, given that prepayments pay accrued interest first, then principal.
Credible doesn’t include Wells Fargo among the student loan lenders they work with. If I were you, I would get rate quotes from the Credible website, compare them with what Wells Fargo offers, and go with the best deal.
I don’t think you understand. You don’t have multiple “hard pulls” of your credit in order to “shop around”!!!
You can shop mortgage, student loan, car, etc, interest rates without multiple hard pulls!!!
@mom2collegekids It is actually common that you have multiple inquiries (hard pulls) when shopping for mortgages or car loans. here is a like to an article from Experian explaining it: https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/multiple-inquiries-when-shopping-for-an-car-loan/