Advantage Education Loan offers no-fee student loans, meaning that you won’t have to pay anything to apply. The main cost to consider is the interest rate. Advantage Education Loan only has fixed interest rates, which stay the same while you pay back your loan.
For most students, these rates range from 3.8% to 6.99%, depending on factors like your or your cosigner’s creditworthiness, DTI and income. Kentucky residents, however, can qualify for rates starting at 4.26%.
Does Advantage Education Loan offer any discounts?
It does. Aside from the discounted interest rates for Kentucky residents, any borrower can get 0.25% knocked off their interest by signing up for autopay.
What are my repayment options?
- Postponed repayment. Hold off on making any repayments until six months after you’ve dropped below half time or graduated.
- Immediate repayment with interest only. Only make payments on interest each month while you’re in school and start making full repayments six months after you graduate.
- Immediate repayment with principle plus interest. Start making full repayments right away. This is your only option if you’re enrolled less than half time and are a student, but it’s also the least expensive option.
Postponing your loans until after you graduate might seem like a no-brainer, but it’ll actually make your loan more expensive. That’s because Advantage Education Loan capitalizes your interest before you start making full repayments. What does this mean? It adds all of those interest charges from when you were in school to your loan balance, meaning you’re repaying a larger amount of money. Since interest is calculated based on your loan balance, you’ll also make higher interest payments.
After you graduate, your options are much more limited. Advantage Education Loan only offers one loan term of 10 years, meaning you can’t lengthen or shorten it to adjust your monthly repayments. It also has a minimum monthly payment of $50. There are forbearance options in extreme situations, though you’ll have to contact your loan servicer Student Loan Corporation to get full details on how much you’re eligible for.
- Competitive rates, especially if you live in Kentucky. Kentucky’s APRs start only slightly higher than what you’d get with federal loans and have the potential to even be lower if you sign up for autopay.
- No fees. Advantage Education Loan doesn’t charge any fees to apply or prepay your loan.
- Less than half time OK. Federal funds won’t cover the cost of one or two courses, but Advantage Education Loan will.
- Can cover last semester’s costs. You can use an Advantage Education Loan student loan to cover unpaid costs from last semester as long as it ended less than 60 days ago and you’re enrolled for another term.
Why you might want to look elsewhere
- Limited by state. Your school and state might be eligible separately, but you still might not qualify for a loan depending on your specific combination of school and state of residence.
- Only one loan term. Advantage Education Loan only offers a 10-year loan term – unaffordably short for large student loans.
- No cosigner release. If you apply with a cosigner, you’ll have to refinance your loan to take them off the hook for your debt. You won’t be able to simply release a cosigner on an Advantage Education Loan.
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We update our data regularly, but information can change between updates. Confirm details with the provider you’re interested in before making a decision.
What do customers say about Advantage Education Loan?
You won’t find much online about Advantage Education Loan from past customers – it has no Better Business Bureau (BBB) or Trustpilot pages and we couldn’t find any mention of it on forums. KHESLC, however, does have a small online presence – though no Trustpilot page.