After you exhaust federal student loans, including unsubsidized and subsidized Direct Loans, your next financing option is private student loans. The best way to begin your private student loan search is through a private student loan marketplace. 

Private Student Loan Marketplaces allow students and parents to compare different student loan interest rates and terms. This is the most time effective way to find the best student loans for you. The following marketplaces will allow students to compare student loans:

Credible

Credible is a private student loan marketplace that allows students and parents to compare multiple lenders with a single form (this is important, because other marketplaces will require you to complete applications for each potential lender). Students can use Credible to compare both undergraduate and graduate student loans. Credible also works with a wide variety of specific lenders including: 

• Ascent 
• Citizens Bank
• College Ave
• Discover Student Loans
• EdvestinU
• InvestEd
• MEFA
• Sallie Mae
• Sun Trust

>>>Search Credible for student loans

PrivateStudentLoans.com

The PrivateStudentLoans.com marketplace begins the student loan search with the college or university in question. After students search for their institution, they are able to review the specific lenders available to them. PrivateStudentLoans.com works with the following lenders:

• College Ave
• Commonbond
• Discover Student Loans
• LendKey
• Salley Mae
• SixUp

>>>Search PrivateStudentLoans.com for student loans

SimpleTuition

SimpeTuition offers students the largest number of lenders to compare. Similar to PrivateStudentLoans.com, SimpleTuition asks students to begin their student loan search with the college or university that they will be attending. The 12 SimpleTuition lenders are: 

• Ascent
• Citizens Bank
• College Ave
• CommonBond
• Discover
• Earnest
• LendKey
• PNC
• Sallie Mae
• SoFi
• SunTrust
• Wells Fargo

After comparing various student loan rates and shopping around, students can pick the private student loans with the most favorable rate, repayment terms, and loan term. 

>>>Search SimpleTuition for student loans

Bottom Line:

Student loan marketplaces will allow you to search, compare, and apply for student loans in a very efficient manner. However, before you finalize your student loans, you should make sure that you have borrowed all of the possible federal student loans available to you. When you take out private loans, you should take out the minimum amount of loans that you will need to pay for school. In order to get the most competitive student loan rate, it is ideal to have a co-signer (such as a parent) who possesses a high credit rating.