We're gonna go ahead and get started.

Today's session is really just meant to answer any questions that you might have. I've pulled up some slides that all reference in to help answer some questions.

But with that, this is really meant for anything that you might be curious about related to college financial aid, whether that's the FAFSA form, understanding student aid index, understanding how to negotiate financial aid appeal awards, or how student loans work. So I'm happy to provide a little bit of background.

I'll just start off with a little bit of a view on some of the different topics that we could talk about.

But please feel free to use either the chat box or the q and a box to ask any questions you might have, and I'll answer them as we go along.

Maybe while I I wait for anybody to ask any questions they might have, I'll, give you the one minute rundown of the overall timeline might consider both for this year and for future year. And as I do, if you have any question, please do feel free to just write them in. This is meant for you to ask anything you might be curious about.

Every year, the college financial aid timeline starts around the same time, and that's with filling out FAFSA form. And for those of you who might not know, that form is what you fill out from the federal government, and that data get sent to schools.

The schools receive your information as long as you've selected the school to receive that information.

They take that and they run some formulas against it.

Once you submit information to FAFSA, those formulas determine something called a student aid index. That's just the basic number that the financial aid office is gonna use in determining what types of aid to make available to you. By itself, it doesn't really mean very much.

And once you have that student aid index and the financial aid office is giving you a financial aid award letter, you have an opportunity to appeal that because there are things that go into calculating that student aid index that are not, a full representation of your family's finances.

Once you've appealed that financial aid award letter and you have a final result, then you'll be left with a number from your student bill that you have to pay for the upcoming term. And I'm happy to answer any questions about strategy about how to do that.

So I I see two good questions that we have to to start off with. And, again, please, for anybody who might have joined more recently, our agenda right now is really just any questions that you might have, and I'll stay as long as it takes to answer any of these.

So please just write them in as we go along. If you'd prefer to to speak your question, you can also raise your hand, and I can unmute you and answer your questions live as well.

First question we have is, what has happened with interest rates most recently?

Good question. So two things that I should answer regarding that. The first is, what are the rates on federal student loans for any loans that you might take from this July first and on? So every single year, the federal student loan options that are available to you are repriced.

So congress created this complicated formula that I won't get into, but all you really need to know is that every single year, for all new loans that are taken from federal government from July first of that year through June thirtieth of that following year, there's one rate for each loan program for anybody who's eligible for it. This year, the rate on the money that the student can borrow from the federal government is gonna be two point three nine percent, and the rate on the money that the parent can borrow from the federal government is eight point nine four percent. So those are the rates that you would get charged on the federal student loans that you would use to pay for the upcoming term.

Those rates are gonna be the same whether you use a loan in the first semester or the second semester. They will move around this year. And for private loans, those rates can actually change a little bit, really from day to day, from week to week, partially based on how interest rates are moving in the broader economy.

Right now, it's a overall interest rates in the economy have been a little bit volatile, but we're kind of settling into over the last few months a relatively narrow range. And so I don't expect there to be significant movement for the next few weeks, but those would be famous last words. No one knows exactly what's going to happen.

Okay. So I think we have a question here about financial aid appeals.

And the question is, I'm gonna I'm gonna take some of the questions you might ask and try to make them a little bit broader to apply to more people as well.

So let me start off with, let me actually just flip to the slide that might be relevant for this.

So let's say You are currently unemployed.

When you submitted FAFSA, may this might be a good thing to just walk through. So it'd be a good roughly ninety second overview of that that's going to help answer this person's question.

So the the short version of the answer to this question, which is, let's say you are currently unemployed and you're asking your daughter's college to reconsider the amount of financial aid that you might be eligible for for this fall.

Do you send updated employment information to the school once you are employed?

How does this employment situation impact, the financial aid that you might receive?

And, it's a great question. The short answer is please appeal your student's financial aid, award letter if you do have less income today than you had two years ago when you filed your taxes in twenty twenty three.

If you are employed a few months later, it's not going to impact or change the financial aid that you would receive after you appeal.

But the key thing to understand is every year, you fill out new FAFSA form. And one of the odd things about that FAFSA form is it takes in three pieces of information, information about your family's income, information about your family's assets, so savings, what, stocks and bonds, real estate and businesses, and some information about your family's side.

And the reason why and then all of that information goes into a formula that calculates your student aid in that and your financial aid office, they take that number that gets calculated, and then they do a bunch more work with that to package a financial aid award letter to you. But there's one really big flaw in this, and you can see it on the left hand column of this slide, and that the income information that FAFSA uses by default is always going to be based on two years ago. So if you're going to college, fall of twenty twenty five, your FAFSA form for this year asks for income information from twenty twenty three.

And if you lost your job since twenty twenty three or if you are reemployed but making less money than you made in twenty twenty three, then that's a very valid reason to appeal to the financial aid office and effectively just tell them, that this is the situation. This is the difference in what I made then versus what I make now. Can you please reconsider the amount of need based financial aid that my family may be eligible for this year? And that's something that applies not just this year, but every future year.

So if, let's say, right now your employment situation is stable, but next year, you, unfortunately, some let's say, one or both parents lose a job, then next year, you will have filled out a new TAPSA form.

It's gonna be based on twenty twenty four income, and you need to proactively tell the financial aid office that the finances of the family have changed so that they have the opportunity to reconsider the amount of need based aid they can package for you.

I see a few more people have joined, so, just the the really quick rundown. We don't have, an agenda today. It is really just meant for answering any questions that you might have. You can type those questions in the chat box, in the q and a box. You can raise your hand on Zoom, and I can unmute you so you can ask your question live as well.

And so please feel free, anybody who's listening, to write any questions you might have about anything related to financial aid, and I I promise I'll answer them today.

Alright. Third question we have is, I've heard that federal loans are always a better place to start over private. Is that true? Why is that?

Very good question. Let's spend two minutes going through the details on that.

So federal student loans, what if you do need any money to pay for college, you generally have three options that are available to you, if if you need to borrow money. Okay? There's other forms of money that hopefully you don't need to borrow that I'm happy to talk about. But if you need to borrow money, there are for undergrad, there are two federal student loan options that are available for you. And there's a third option, which is private loans from different banks, credit unions, or, other lenders.

The two federal student loan options are, let's say, bucket one is money that's borrowed by the student directly, called a direct or a separate loan. And bucket two is money that is borrowed by the parent, and that's called a parent plus loan.

It is, I'd say, generally accepted that if you do need to borrow money to pay for school, you would start with what the student is allowed to borrow directly, that direct Stafford loan.

That is, between those two federal student loan programs that has lower rates, and it has a lot more protections built into it. So, you really should use that first if any money needs to get borrowed.

But there's one downside to that program, which is the amount that someone is allowed to borrow through it each year. And so what I was showing you on this slide is the amount of money that a student is allowed to borrow through the direct loan program from the government, for each year that they are in school. And if you need more money than that, then the alternative is to look at a parent plus loan or a private load. And so let's go through what these limits are for thirty second, and then I'll maybe help you compare, the scenarios in which it could make sense to see what private options look like relative to the parent plus loan.

The student themselves is allowed to borrow, money based on their borrowing limit for the year. It's based on two factors, what year they are in school and whether the Department of Education classifies them as being a dependent student or an independent student.

And that has nothing to do with whether they're blamed on a parent's taxes or if they're over or under eighteen. It's a specific definition that's on the right hand side of the slide, and it has more to do with whether they're twenty four or older. If they're married, if they're, veteran, an emancipated minor, a couple of other factors.

If they're not any of those things, then they're a dependent student, and they're allowed to borrow what you see on the left hand side of the slide. So, just let's make this really simple for an example. Let's assume that we're talking about an incoming, first year student who's dependent, they'd be allowed to borrow five thousand five hundred dollars from the federal government directly. And if they need more money than that, then they'd need to look at something called a parent plus program.

Parent plus exists to help parents fill the gap between what the student can borrow and what they actually still need to pay for the school, but it's a lot more expensive than the program that I just showed you. So for a parent plus loan, that's an eight point nine four percent rate plus it has a four percent fee that I'm happy to talk about if people have questions about.

And because this is more expensive, there are scenarios where someone could qualify for a lower private rate than, what the parent plus loan looked like. And so to kinda bring this answer to a close, it is generally true that if you need to borrow money, you should borrow what the student is able to get from the government directly first.

If you need more money than that still, then you could compare what private, loan option rates you qualify for to what the parent plus loan program is charging you for this year.

Really good question. Can you pay on unsubsidized loans while the student is still in school?

So short answer, yes. And let's let's broaden that answer. And and, again, if anybody has other questions or follow ups, please type them.

My my agenda is just to answer any questions that people have.

On any kind, of the education loans, whether that the the two types of federal loan programs or the private loan options that are available to you from different places, there are not prepayment penalties. Meaning, you can pay these off more quickly than you are otherwise required to do.

The way the process generally works is you once the there's something called disbursement. Disbursement's a technical term, which means that the day that the money is spent to school. So let's say you borrowed five thousand dollars for the fall, and let's say your disbursement date is September first.

The five thousand dollars gets sent to the school on September first, and you're gonna start accruing interest on that loan at whatever rate you've agreed to from September first to not. And if you want to start making, if it's a federal direct unsubsidized loan, which is what I think this question is about, What that means is this is the money that the student is allowed to borrow from the government. It starts accruing interest to this six point three nine percent rate from September first and on in this example, and the student is not required to make any payments on it until six months after they graduate.

But if you wanted to, you absolutely can start making payments towards that loan while the students is still in school.

One popular strategy is to just pay off the interest as it accrues each month so that when you graduate, the balance is the same as the balance when you started the loan.

Another strategy is for those who just happen to have the extra financial bandwidth, they just start paying this loan down. You can absolutely make excess payments every single month and start chipping away at it before the student graduate if you choose to do so.

Question here on who do you pay the loan back to, while you are at school? So for both federal loans and private loans, you're gonna have a servicer of that loan.

What that really means is, let's say you got a loan from the federal government or you got a loan from make it simple. Let's say you got a federal student loan.

You will, at some point in the process, be introduced to a servicer, which could be something like, Enelnet, Great Lakes, a couple of other common names.

And that's a a company that basically is contracted by the federal government to, collect payments for the government on their behalf from you.

And so you would end up opening, just creating your account with that servicer. You should be contacting you directly, and, you would set up payments with that servicer. In many cases, you don't have payment that or cases, you don't have payment that are yet due while the student is in school, but you can still, change your payment preferences and setting in that servicer's portal or dashboard.

And so you're making payments to the government, but you're doing it through the servicer.

Okay. Good good question here on it's it's related to a graduate student, which, by the way, if anybody has questions related to graduate students, leave. Let me know. Happy to answer those as well.

In fact, most of what does is related to grad student historically.

So in this scenario, someone is, an incoming law school student, and they need to take out, student loans.

They're looking at the federal student loan options, but it sounds like they want to compare what their private loan options look like.

Most of the private loan options that they're currently looking at require a cosigner.

And so if somebody else who shares legal responsibility for paying back that loan, are there options for a graduate student to get a private loan that would hopefully be cheaper than a a federal loan without a cosigner?

The short answer to that is yes, but it's a little bit more complicated. And so, for the reason why it's a little bit more complicated, it's just that if you generalize this, the reason why most private loans, are cosigned between both the parent and the student is because the student themselves typically doesn't have either enough, a high enough credit score or long enough credit history to meet some lenders' requirement.

And some lenders also require the student to be earning income while they are currently in school in order to meet something called a debt to income ratio to be eligible for a private loan without having a parent or another credit worthy adult cosigning on that loan.

And so the person who asked that question, it's a great question. I I would ask you to email me directly, and I'm just typing my email address in response to your question in the q and a box.

And, this is something we deal with very often.

And there might be some solutions or at least plates that could help point you towards that could, at least add extra options to your toolkit for paying for law school this year.

Question here on when can you apply for the parent plus loan?

So if your student is going to college this fall, you can apply for a parent plus loan right now if you wanted to.

The there's a link here I'll, that and and I'm happy to just send I promise I will send a link, tomorrow.

That goes to the student aid dot gov website, where you apply for a parent flex plan. And so, I would recommend doing that now. It doesn't matter if you you're gonna wanna work backwards from your tuition due date. So tuition for most schools, not all, but most schools, is going to be due at some point in August or September.

Some schools are even earlier than that. And you want to apply for a parent plus loan at least thirty days before that. There's no hard and fast rule, but let's just say, let's do it thirty days before. It's about a fifteen minute application on the Department of Education's website.

There's no credit score cutoff in order to qualify for a parent plus loan, but there are some reasons why you could theoretically get denied.

I'll also, in that email that I sent, include a a link to where the Department of Education list the the reasons why someone could be denied.

But in general, there's no income requirement on parent plus, and there's no credit score cutoff.

The reasons why you can be denied or if the Department of Ed does that you have something called adverse credit history, which is things like, tax liens or wage garnishment, fees and bankruptcies, or haven't defaulted on previous student loans. If those things aren't showing up on your credit report, then, generally, you should be approved for a parent plus loan from the government. But if you have any more questions on that, I'm I'm happy to answer them.

I have a a great question here on, shouldn't we do a private loan if the interest rates are lower? And there's two ways I want to answer that.

First is so I'm showing you that you have these this federal direct loan lets that student borrow five thousand five hundred dollars. And if somebody needs more money than that, they use the parent plus loan, which has much higher rate. A common question I'll get is, I qualify for a private loan that has a lower rate than the federal direct loan. Why wouldn't I just ignore the federal direct loan and take the entirety of what I need to borrow from the year from a private lender instead of using the federal direct loan?

And my answer to that is that although the rate might look like it's lower, that you need to have confidence that the student won't be working in certain public sector jobs after they graduate.

The federal direct loan has six point three nine percent rate, but it is quite possible that that that student could qualify for public, service loan forgiveness in a variety of career field. And so they could end up being a a prosecutor or working in a hospital system, with the. That might change in the future, and then we'll get into that later. Or, be a teacher or some other careers where the entirety of that federal direct loan balance would be wiped out after ten years of on time payments under the right repayment program. And so it's just something to consider, that you might get a lower rate than a direct loan, but the direct loan has the potential to be wiped out. And so you don't wanna lose that optionality if there's a chance that the student might enter a career path that would make that possible.

Alright. There's a second way, to a, Adam, to ask this question that I I really want to make sure everybody here has a chance to hear.

So when when we think about student loan options, let's let's plan for four years and not one year. And I say that because, part of what I would recommend doing is finding a way to just have as many options available to you or across all four years as you can. An important thing to understand is there's a current version of student loan policies, and that lets a parent plus a parent borrow all the way up to whatever the cost of attendance is for the student.

So in a way, it's it's there. As long as you qualify, they're to fill whatever gap is needed in order to help the child go to school for the year.

There are potentially some changes coming to that program.

There are two versions of the bill that's in congress right now that are, if they're more likely to pass than not. And then one version or in both versions of that, the parent plus program, which currently lets you here's just the the summary slide. I'll send this tomorrow as well.

In in both versions, all you really need to know from this slide is that starting next year, it's possible that, the amount that a parent can borrow through the parent plus loan program would go down significantly.

And, it'll go down both in terms of how much somebody can borrow each year and how much they can borrow, over the lifetime of the time that the student is in school.

But if the student uses the direct loan this year, then they're grandfathered into the current version of federal student loan policy for three more years after this year. Put another way, as long as the student is borrowing the a dollar from that federal direct loan program, then their parents would be allowed to borrow, the unlimited amount for through parent plus, both for this year, but also future years. And so I would recommend to at least borrow a dollar through the direct loan program even if you get much lower private rates from somewhere else just so that you maintain the optionality of using parent plots in future years in case you need it in future years.

Very good question here regarding interest accrual.

So the premise in the question is, I've heard that student loans have interest deferred until, the student is out of school. Is that true, as compared to private loans where interest accrues right away?

That is both true and not true. So there's three types of, let's say, two and a half types of federal student loans such as that. So for the federal direct loan, again, which is the money the student is allowed to borrow from the school, it can either be subsidized or unsubsidized.

And that may depend partially on the results of your FAFSA and your school and the financial aid award letter you get from the school.

And only a small amount of that loan, not let's say it's up to thirty five hundred dollars for the first year of school can be subsidized.

What the only loan that exists that I'm aware of where you don't accrue interest while you're in school is a subsidized federal direct loan, And only up the the at a smaller amount of what you can borrow for the first year is eligible for not accruing interest until after graduation.

If your loan doesn't say that it's subsidized, then it does start accruing interest as soon as the money is dispersed, which again means as soon as the money is spent to school.

That is how it works for federal direct unsubsidized loans, for parent plus loans, and for all private student loans.

You can defer making payments until six months after graduation on federal loans and up to nine months after graduation on some private loans, but the interest does still accrue while the student is in school as soon as the money is sent to the school.

And the one like, a little wrinkle on that, which I get question quite commonly, Interest doesn't start accruing once you apply for a loan or once you sign for a loan legally. It is only going to start accruing once the money is actually sent to the school on that tuition due date. And the tuition due date is a a uniform thing across, for a school. So whether you're getting a loan from place a, b, or c, the school says that this is the date that we want the the lender to send us the money, and they work with the lender to make sure they receive the money on that date.

Question. I have some quicker question. The direct unsubsidized loans, are they under the student's name? Yes. They are under the student's name only. So both the direct subsidized and the direct unsubsidized loans are under the student's name. The parent plus loan from the government is only under the parent's name, and most private student loans are under both the student and the cosigner's name.

I see a question I'm just gonna that I'm I'm typing a a response to just to ask for a little bit more clarification.

Okay. Good question here. So someone's daughter is an incoming freshman this fall. They received some scholarships and about five thousand dollars in loans from the government. So it would probably be five thousand five hundred dollars of federal direct either subsidized or unsubsidized loans. This is something that you probably saw in your financial aid award letter. And the question is, how do you secure that?

And then where do you go from there to get the parent plus loan to help build the gap?

Very good question. So and each school can do this slightly differently.

But generally speaking, your school should have a login.

Once you've been admitted, you put down your deposit. You, are probably have received an email from the financial aid office, and that email probably has some information about logging in to either view your student bill or logging in to your school's financial aid portal.

And so it this could be different from place to place, but, typically, what you first step you wanna do is log in to your school's financial aid portal. Check what email you may have received that will allow you to do this. On the different buckets of aid that are available to you, that they have offered you, there would typically be a button that says accept. And you'd so this won't generally happen for Parent Plus, but for the money that the student could get, you just wanna make sure that you log in to that portal and you click accept on the federal direct loans that the student is eligible for.

If you see federal work study that is also offered to you, you'll see federal work study as a line and potentially a dollar amount of work study that you are eligible for. And you would also need to accept that if you intend to use it. And so, just keep that in mind. If you don't know what I'm talking about right now, it's possible that your school hasn't yet sent you an email to do that.

And if you are concerned and it's, let's say, getting closer to within forty five days when tuition is due, I would recommend just emailing your school's financial aid office and asking them that how to accept the federal direct loan for their program that's here.

If you need more money after that, you actually have to apply for the Parent PLUS loan separately.

Many schools will share the Parent PLUS loan link, but you it's all gonna go to the same place. So you'll apply for that parent plus loan on the federal government's website for this at jude may dot gov, and I'll send you the link for where you would apply tomorrow as well. When you fill out that roughly fifteen minute application, part of the questions will ask what school, you are intending to use that parent plus loan for.

And then once you are approved for that, you should get some communication from the school about or you might want to proactively reach out to the school to let them know that you're going to use a parent plus loan to fill the remainder.

Very good question here about, let's say, what happens, with your student loan payments if you go straight from undergrad to graduate school? And so, in there's a few scenarios here. In in general, if for federal student loans, if you're going from undergrad to grad, then there's something called an in school deferment. So you'll start accruing interest on the money in undergrad once that money is sent to school, but you are able to defer being required to make full payments on this until six months after you graduate from graduate school as well.

And with private lenders, at least most, it's highly similar in that, there is an in school deferment window. So if you took a private loan in, let's say, your senior year of college, and then you go to law school after that and defer making payment until after law school is done as well.

The only scenario for a private loan where that is not true is if you selected immediate repayment as your repayment option when you took out the loan. And so when you potentially take a private loan, you have a number of different repayment options that are available to you.

Let me just flip to it's on the bottom right hand side of the slide, of the four repayment options that might be available to you from different banks and credit unions and other lenders, one of those options is called immediate repayment. And what that means is that you would start making, let's just call them full payments on the loan, shortly after that money was sent to full. And the way it would work is the the monthly payment you're required to make is such that if you choose a five year immediate repayment loan, you should be done paying it back roughly five years after the money is sent to the school.

So question here on, if I apply now for a parent plus loan, how much do I apply for?

It's a good question. So if you are unsure how much of a loan to apply for, whether through parent plus or another source, the most accurate answer would be you would wait for your student bill. And your student bill is gonna be generated, again, different from school to school, but roughly thirty to sixty days before that tuition is due. The financial aid office should send you the student bill. That student bill, should tell you this is how much you owe for the fall term, for example.

And you would, after subtracting out scholarships and grants and potentially the money that the student is borrowing from the federal government, and you'd be left with, okay, this is the amount that I have to pay. Maybe some of that can come from savings for five twenty nine plan. Let's just assume that it doesn't. Then that amount that you need to pay would potentially be how much you would be applying for for a parent plus loan.

If you wanna get ahead of it, then you can always apply for you can do a general estimate. And if you overestimate by a little bit, that's completely fine because what happens is let's say you overestimate how much you need for a parent plus loan, and two weeks from now, the school comes and says, okay. Your actual bill is four thousand dollars less than the amount that you applied for.

Then the school will automatically reduce that loan amount by four thousand dollars on the back end.

Question here. Do I have a favorite private loan lender, or does it just depend on specific details?

A lot of what Juno does is helping people find the best overall deal in the private loan market. And so I would recommend just checking your rates on Juno, and let me just actually switch to to this slide really quick. It's the the quick plug. So for a lot of people, using the federal tariff plus program is going to be the best offer that's available to them and what they should use. And for some people, they'll qualify for lower rates or better terms from a private lender than they would get from tariff plus. Juno exists to help people find the lowest rate or the best overall deal if they are looking in the private market.

There is no one best private lender, in my opinion.

We have set up a process to try to leave you with the, hopefully, best financial outcome if you do use a private lender. And the way it works is, you can check your rates through some lending partners on join Juno dot com, and you can check your rates without impacting your credit. It takes about three minutes to do so. If you like any of the offers you see and you move forward with them, then we're able to get you two percent cash back on the loan amount.

And when I say there's no best private lender, it's because the rates are quite different for each person based on their credit and really from week to week. It can change from time to time. There is a little bit of volatility in how these loans are priced from private lenders.

And so what we encourage you to do is to shop around, to see what other rates you might be eligible to receive from other places. And if you find a better rate from somewhere else for a similar term length than repayment type, for example, you're comparing a five year immediate repayment loan that you see on Juneau to the same thing from another place, then we have a process by which we can get one of our lending partners to match that lower rate, and then we give you three percent cash back on that loan amount or haven't gone through the trouble of doing that rate match process.

We make it extremely simple where, really, all you need to do is email hello at join Juno dot com, and someone can walk you through it end to end for as long as you need and answer any questions you might have.

But that's really our role in this process is to help people understand why federal loans are great for any, if not most people, and for those people who do need a private loan, how to actually get the a better rate and the cashback and customer service component.

Question here on when and how is the cashback provided.

And so we send it when the money is dispersed to the school. So, when the school will actually receive the money that you borrow, and we have a few different ways that you can get it. The most common is a digital check that we process and that you can then deposit in your personal bank account.

Question here on when should we apply by to ensure that we're prepared for the fall? How many weeks ahead are you is needed to process everything?

So a few different ways I'd like to answer that. The short answer is, as long as you're applying thirty or more days before your tuition due date, you are highly likely to be fine.

And in reality, you can even apply for a private loan and, closer to your tuition due date. And in many cases, it it you'll meet your deadline.

But there's two things that to consider here. So one that I'll walk you through is just one of the benefits of applying early.

And the second is, really around thinking through the timeline between how long it typically takes somebody to check their rates all the way through to getting the money deposited at school. And so, first, let's just talk a little bit about, one of the potential benefits of starting early and that once you apply for a loan from any private lender, and if you are approved, you're approved for a certain set of rates. There's a a menu of options that you can choose from, and those are actually locked for about thirty days. So you have a thirty day window where if, rates change in the broader economy, you'd still secure it instead of rate.

And you in those thirty days, at some point, as long as you sign that loan, which is a digital signature saying that you want to use it, then those rates will be available to you to use for the fall term.

In a way, it's just getting yourself a little bit of optionality in the process.

The second is just understanding the general timeline on, how private loans, applications work. So I'm gonna share a little bit of data that is a general overview of average time lines from, last year. So, let's say, typically, you're able to check your rates without impacting your credit in about three minutes or less.

That doesn't lock anything.

After that, if you like something that you see, whether it's or anywhere else, you would have to submit a full application. That full application would typically take you about fifteen minutes.

And let's say, roughly fifty percent of the people who do get approved once they submit a full application are approved within one day.

And over ninety percent of people who do get approved are approved within three business days.

Once you are approved, if you want to use a loan, the remaining steps for you is to sign it. Finding it as a digital signature that basically just says you intend to use this to pay for this school for this term.

And then on the back end, there's really nothing else that you need to do. The school, the lender, whoever it is, all they do is they communicate with the school during something called the certification process, if you read about it or hear about it somewhere else.

And what that means is the lender's contacted your financial aid office, and they're asking, is the student, actually a student at the school, and is the amount that you're asking to borrow, less than or equal to the cost of going to the school for the year? So, basically, just saying, is the amount they're asking to borrow about?

The school would then say, yes. They are a student. Yes. This is the correct amount. And then the school would also say, this is the date on which we want you to send the money.

The lender sends the money on that date. If the amount that you're asking to borrow is also meant to cover some living expenses, then what the school will do is they'll take that money. They'll subtract out the tuition and the required fees for that term, and any extra amount that's left over that you're intending to use for living expenses or for books and supplies is gonna fit in an account that the schools financially adopt.

And they'll typically email you and say, log in to this account and wire this extra money to your personal account to use for whatever you need to use it for, whether that's rent or food or booking supplies.

So to kinda wrap all that up for private loans in general, you could start the process, let's say, today and in fifty percent of cases, get all the way through to finding a loan tomorrow.

And from that point on, the lender just contact the school, and and they arrange transfer of money.

To be on the safer side, that approval process for people, maybe it's a little more complicated financial situation, could take a little bit longer if they are gonna get approved.

But it it's a tighter timeline than you might think. In most cases, it can be done very, very quickly.

There's a question here on what is a typical private loan rate range for a family with a strong FICO, let's say, eight hundred plus, then high income? And then the follow-up is, do both parents typically apply or that just one family? So I can't share exact rate ranges, because there are other factors in play. And, but what I can say is the least the profile that was just shared here, that is the type of profile that, in many cases, can qualify for lower rates from private lenders compared to what you'd see from a a parent plus rate.

There's but what you're gonna actually qualify for could absolutely vary.

The if you're in Texas, let me give a slightly longer version of this answer. If you happen to be a resident in Texas or your student is going to school in Texas, then there is a partner we have for whom as long as you qualify, whatever your credit score is is gonna likely lead you to a rate that is much lower than what you'd get from CarePlus.

And that's gonna apply to about ten to twelve percent of people overall. And if you're that's through a a not for profit lender that we partner with who has just an absolutely incredible product.

If that's not the case, you can still check your rates through Juno and through other places. And, there are there are many cases where people can qualify for rates and terms that are lower than what we get from ParaPlus.

And what you wanna make sure to do is that you're taking advantage of the fact that there are these soft check experiences out there. You can check some things on Juno. You can check some others on a website called credible dot com. That's c r e d I b l e.

And checking your rates will only take a couple of minutes, and it won't impact your credit in that process.

So here's a question from somebody who sent information for a rate match through Juno, and I was wondering how long that profits take, or most rates usually match without any problem.

So I'd say most of the rate matches that we're able to do, typically twenty four to forty eight hours. If you have any need to accelerate that beyond that, please reach out to me or our team directly, and we just work to escalate things and get things moving more quickly.

The there are, I'd say, in most cases, the the rate would get matched, without an issue. And that's as long as you we have a set of terms and conditions on our site that defines the list of lenders that we're able to match again. I'll be very honest with the long list. This is not meant to be a gotcha in any way. It's a long list that's meant to encompass, almost all places.

And so, but primarily national lenders. And so if you're comparing a list a rate from eligible lender, as long as you are comparing something that was done within a certain number of days, and you're matching the same terms, there shouldn't be any issue. And if you have any issue or questions, you can reach out to me directly, and I'll make sure that whatever issue you have would get fixed.

K.

Again, I'm happy to stay on for any more questions that folks have.

And I'll give another minute or two, of okay. Some of you came late. Yes. We will send a recording of this meeting so you can rewatch it and review, in case that's helpful.

And in general, if you have any questions that maybe you haven't thought of yet or things that come up after you get your student bill or you start shopping around or, even next year. Please reach out to us.

The way that we run Juno is meant, and I I mean this very honestly, to do whatever we can to try to build trust and increase transparency about how paying for coverage overall works.

And I I say that because if you end up using a product through Juno, that's great.

But if you don't, it doesn't matter to me personally. What matters is that we're able to educate you a little bit more on what the process looks like, the cases, how we would think through making decisions, why shopping around help.

If perhaps, you find something better or decide that another product is what you wanna use for this year, then there's a chance that maybe next year or a few years from now or graduate school, you may come back and and take a look at it again, see if there's some way that we could help you then. And so I would like this to be something that's a longer term relationship, and we just have a couple of promises that we'll make to you now and that I'll commit to us continuing to keep for the future.

Juno is a membership organization, and it's a membership organization I started with my classmate to try to get cheaper student loans for our MBAs at Harvard, and it worked. We bundled together a lot of people who needed to get loans at the same time, and we were able to use the leverage of that larger group to get banks to do something for the group that they might not have done for an individual.

We've copied that same concept now across all program type in the US.

We've copied that same thing in the last two months for student loan refinancing when people graduate.

And the whole way this works is that Juno is a free membership organization.

The benefit that we get is the benefit that you get. It's more people learn about it, more people join us. We get more leverage to get participants in the market to offer great things to our group that we can't get on our own. So promise one, we're always free. We're not gonna charge you for anything.

It's important for you to have transparency in the process, and so we do everything we can to make sure that you can be rates that you might be eligible for without getting a hard credit check before you have to apply.

And it's really important to make sure that the products that we do end up presenting you with through the banks and other lenders that do work with us don't have any fee on applications, no fees on origination, and no prepayment penalty, meaning you're able to pay things back early without any penalty and to always have an option in those payments to defer making payments while in school.

And I do really mean it if you have any questions that are, that you wanna follow-up with in the future or anything that you wanna know about related to FAFSA, to how student aid index is calculated, to negotiating financial aid awards, to reviewing financial aid appeal letters, or understanding how federal loans and private loans work.

Our whole team is available for free one on ones all year round. We literally do thousands of calls and conversations with people every year, and we're scaling up to be able to continue doing more of them. And so, please don't feel any hesitation to reach out and ask us for anything.

Alright. So we have one more question here, and, I'll I'll answer this. And if you have more questions, I'll I'll certainly stay on. Otherwise, we'll wrap it up after this. So true or false, if you don't take all of the federal direct aid offer, will the college reduce your financial aid in future years?

False.

That has nothing to do with next year's, financial aid or need based aid award calculation.

Another question. So in a nutshell, if your the student doesn't get a full ride, the parent has to pay.

True if the amount that, is left on the student bill is higher than the amount that the student is allowed to borrow from the federal government directly.

That full ride could be composed of three things.

So first could be meriting. That's money that the school has provided to the student typically before their freshman year to get them to accept their offer of admission. That's typically based on something interested or stellar about what they did in high school that makes we'll want to give them a discount.

The second bucket could be, need based aid. And within need based aid, we're talking about the school has money that it can give to the student each year based on the family's financial situation.

The federal government can help you qualify for certain types of grants that don't have to be paid back, and some state government also have need based pay they can allocate to the student, that doesn't have to be paid back.

But then the third bucket is gonna really be the federal loans that the student is able to take out. If everything I've spoken about in across those three doesn't cover the student bill, then the remainder would have to be paid for by either the student or the parent in some way.

Alright.

I am gonna wrap it up now, but I just wanna say thank you very much for attending our our first ask with anything session for the summer. If you have questions that you wanna follow-up on, more than happy to answer those one on one. And, you can just reply to the email that we'll send tomorrow, and I'll make sure that somebody gets you a response to whatever question you have as soon as we can too.

With that, I hope you have a great rest of your evening, and I hope to speak with you soon.