As new and returning college students gear up for the school year about to get underway, NextStudent Inc., one of the country’s longtime sources for college financing, has unveiled a new look to its website, nextstudent.com, with easier than ever one-stop access to a wide array of education financing options.

Since the spread of the post-subprime credit freeze into the student loan marketplace a year ago, non-government channels of student loan financing have shrunk to few and far between. Credit-based private student loans — which families have often relied upon to supplement their federal financial aid — have become especially difficult to come by, as several lenders of private student loans have gone out of business. The few lenders that remain have restricted their qualifying criteria to borrowers with superior credit or stopped offering private student loans altogether.

Even federal student loans, however, can be hard to find for those students whose schools have not yet transferred over to the Department of Education’s Federal Direct Loan Program but remain in the government-subsidized Federal Family Education Loan Program. Students enrolled at a FFELP school must obtain their federal college loans through a bank, state agency, or other third-party lender rather than directly from the government.

NextStudent, however, offers a simple online solution for those students and their families trying to find available student loans and other viable financial aid options.

The NextStudent website offers one-stop access to a network of multiple student loan providers. With just one click, students and parents can access a portal that allows them to compare dozens of student loans from various lenders and shop for the financing option that best fits the family budget. This portal puts students directly in contact with available lenders and allows students and parents to apply for student loans right then and there via these lenders’ online applications.

Throughout the NextStudent website, students and families researching their college financing options will also find extensive information on financial aid and on parent and student loans — both federal college loans and non-federal private student loans.

To try to minimize their need for federal and private student loans, students visiting the NextStudent website can search for free money for college using NextStudent’s award-winning Scholarship Search Engine.

Continually updated and available for anyone to use, the NextStudent Scholarship Search Engine offers free round-the-clock access to one of the largest online databases of scholarship information available, currently listing nearly 6 million individually awarded scholarships, valued at over $16 billion.

Start Your Scholarship Search

Scholarship Search Tips:

• Search diligently and come back often. Scholarships change and new ones are added.
• “What if” your search. For example, a student may have an SAT score of 1100 right now, but “what if” he/she retested and scored higher?
• Don’t limit yourself to one academic major. Select multiple majors to see what’s available.
• Or better yet, select “No Academic Major” to see the scholarships and financial aid awards available to students regardless of their field of study. Some scholarship awards are based simply upon the student’s desire to attend college, with no consideration for the student ’s intended major.
• Visit your school’s guidance office, the public library and college Financial Aid Offices to look for small, local awards that aren ‘t posted on search engines or in books on scholarships.

Source: NextStudent.com