CommonBond student loans in a nutshell

CommonBond offers in-school financing for just about every type of borrower except for parents (although it does offer Parent PLUS refinancing if you want to lower your federal loan rates down the road).

Whether you’re an undergraduate, graduate, MBA student, dental student or medical student, you can check your potential interest rate without affecting your credit. In fact, you’ll just need to input your school name and degree type as well as your income (and your cosigner’s) and credit score before possible rates display.

If you decide to proceed with a formal loan application — you can apply on any device — here’s what you can expect from CommonBond student loans:

• No application, origination or prepayment fees (MBA, dental and medical loans carry a 2% origination fee)
• Fixed and variable interest rates
• Option to borrow from $2,000 to up to 100% of your school’s cost of attendance
• Repayment terms of 5, 10 and 15 years available for undergraduates and terms of up to 20 years for dental and medical students
• 4 in-school repayment options, including full deferment
• 6-month grace period
• A 0.25% discount for enrolling in autopay
• Option to apply to pause your payments for up to 12 months of forbearance
• Ability to release your cosigner after 2 years of timely payments

The highlights of CommonBond student loans

A competitive interest rate is a key feature when comparing lenders. CommonBond not only features relatively low fixed and variable rates, but it also provides discounted rates to borrowers who make automatic payments (0.25% reduction) and begin repayment while enrolled in school (discount varies). If you qualify for an 8.03% rate, for example, you might reduce it to 7.30%, saving you at least hundreds of dollars of interest in repayment.

Aside from attractive rates, here are other highlights of CommonBond loans:

Receive a free ‘Money Mentor’

If you and your cosigner want some assistance with the college financial aid process, you might welcome the free support provided by CommonBond. The online company pairs you with a Money Mentor — a trained college student who’s been there, done that and is ready to answer your questions over text.

“We make sure to empathize with students — going to and paying for college is a really stressful and emotional time,” Money Mentor CEO Kelly Peeler told Student Loan Hero. “Not only is it confusing figuring out how loans are, it’s also overwhelming doing that while trying to find housing, pick out classes and live with new people.”

If you have questions that are specific to CommonBond, the lender’s customer service team is also available over the phone and live chat on weekdays until 8 p.m. EST.

As for other unique perks of borrowing from CommonBond, MBA students could participate in CommonBond’s New York-based internship program and take part in the company’s summer workshop series.

Rest easy with repayment protections

Although it falls well short of federal student loan’s safeguards, CommonBond’s private loans come with a safety net. If your finances are in trouble after leaving school, you could request to postpone your monthly payments via forbearance. CommonBond awards up to 12 months of forbearance during your repayment.

In addition, dental students can defer repayment until after completing their residency, while medical students could limit their monthly payments to $100 during residency programs, including internships, fellowships and research.

Give back to other students

You might not feel great about borrowing student loans, but CommonBond delivers a silver lining. When a new customer takes out a loan, the lender funds the education of a child in a developing country, such as Ghana.

CommonBond claimed on its website to have raised over $1 million and built more than 470 schools through its work with the nonprofit Pencils of Promise.

The fine print of CommonBond student loans

CommonBond, which also refinances graduates’ student loans, is able to award decreased rates and increased perks, in part, because it’s more choosy than your average lender. It doesn’t lend to every student.

The strict eligibility criteria could leave you looking elsewhere, either because you’re ineligible or want to avoid a hassle.

Here’s what to keep in mind if you’re considering CommonBond:

A cosigner could be required

Many lenders request undergraduate student loans to bring a cosigner aboard because teens and 20-somethings usually have thin credit histories. A parent or someone else could help them qualify or receive a lower interest rate.

If you’re a creditworthy undergraduate or graduate student, however, you might bristle at the fact that CommonBond requires you to recruit a cosigner. For its part, CommonBond doesn’t require a cosigner if you’re an MBA, dental or medical school student, though.

If you don’t fall into one of these categories and want to try to qualify on your own, compare rates at lenders like Earnest that don’t require a cosigner.

There are other narrow eligibility requirements

Attaching a cosigner to your application (in the case of undergraduate and graduate students) isn’t the only hard-and-fast rule among CommonBond’s eligibility criteria.

The online-only lender cherry-picks its borrowers in other ways, too. Fortunately, if you don’t meet one or more of these criteria, you could probably find another, more accessible lender.

Are CommonBond student loans right for you?

With competitive interest rates, responsive customer support and more repayment protections than your average private lender, CommonBond is worth considering for students of all levels. That doesn’t mean it serves all students equally.

Without cosigner requirements, MBA, dental and medical students seem to benefit most from CommonBond loans. Included are benefits like internship and career resources for MBA students and a residency deferment for dental and medical residents.

Of course, even if you have the cosigner or credit score to qualify, you might find a better student loan elsewhere. To set yourself up for a successful borrowing and repayment experience, compare CommonBond with other highly-rated private student loan companies listed on our site.

Earnest student loans in a nutshell

Acquired by Navient in 2017, Earnest now features education loans for both undergraduate and graduate students. To be eligible, you must be a full-time student seeking a bachelor’s or an advanced degree at an eligible university. You can confirm that you meet the criteria — without affecting your credit — simply by providing your school name and estimated credit score.

Earnest offers student loans of between $1,000 (unless specified by the state of residence) and 100% of your school’s cost of attendance. Other features include:

• Choice of a fixed or variable interest rate
• Loan terms spanning 10, 12 or 15 years, with cosigned loans also eligible for a five- or seven-year term
• A longer-than-usual nine-month grace period after leaving school
• Option of flat, interest-only or full payments while in school — or you can defer payments until the end of the grace period (unless specified by the state of residence)
• No loan fees, even for late payments
• 0.25% rate discount for enrolling in autopay

The highlights of Earnest student loans

With so much jargon, student loans can be confusing. For its part, Earnest attempts to demystify the borrowing process.

The company is extremely transparent about its eligibility criteria, for example. To qualify, you (or your cosigner) would need a 650 credit score, three years of credit history and at least $35,000 in annual income.

Clear-cut and up-front guidelines such as these, along with a solid customer service department — which it calls its “Client Happiness” team — might help explain why Earnest enjoys a five-star rating on review sites like Trustpilot.

Here are three more reasons you might like Earnest as your potential lender.

Competitive fixed and variable rates

Earnest offers variable rates for student loan refinancing starting at 1.99% and fixed rates beginning at 3.20%, counting its 0.25% rate reduction for signing up for autopay.

Those are relatively low rates when compared with many of the competing banks, credit unions and online companies out there. That may also be true if you’re a graduate student considering federal student loans: Direct Unsubsidized Loans (6.08%) and PLUS Loans (7.08%) both carried higher rates in 2019 — and that’s before accounting for the government’s loan origination fees.

With Earnest, you may be able to score an interest rate on the lower end of their range by including a cosigner, even if you could qualify on your own.

A seamless loan application process

If you’re ready to apply with Earnest, you can carry out the entire process on your desktop or mobile device.

1. Confirm your eligibility: Input your school name, approximate credit score and other information to receive a decision within two minutes.

2. Complete a full application: After being invited (or possibly required) to include a cosigner, you would provide additional details, such as your housing costs and tax forms, to formally apply for a loan. Earnest prides itself on considering more factors than most lenders, including your (or your cosigner’s) savings and assets, as well as employment history and career trajectory.

3. Select your loan term: Once your application is approved, you’ll be offered a rate and a potential loan term. As noted above, independent borrowers could choose to repay their debt over 10, 12 or 15 years, and cosigned loans are also eligible for a five- or seven-year term. Once you receive your formal loan offer, you would have up to 30 days to accept it.

Flexible repayment options

As an enrolled student, you might like the idea of Earnest’s nine-month grace period — three months longer than the industry standard. It might allow you to put off repayment until you’ve found your footing in the real world.

Once you’re in repayment on your loans, however, you could still find yourself overwhelmed by other financial obligations, such as finding a job or dealing with medical or credit card debt. Fortunately, Earnest is also one of the lenders with payment postponement options if you need a break from your monthly bill.

Military members, for example, are eligible for a deferment while on active duty. More broadly, any Earnest borrower can skip one payment per year — though this would lengthen your loan term and increase your interest payout over the life of the loan.

To skip a payment, you need to have previously made at least six consecutive and full payments toward your debt, and you must file your request at least five days before your next payment due date.

The fine print of Earnest student loans

No Earnest student loan review would be complete without full context, including some of the downsides.

It’s wise to consider how the company might fall short of your borrowing needs, so before zeroing in on this lender as your choice, keep these three facts in mind:

You might not be eligible at all

Like other lenders, Earnest has strict eligibility requirements. Even if you (and your cosigner) have the credit score and income to qualify, you could be turned down if there’s a prior collections notice or bankruptcy proceeding.

Beyond meeting thresholds for your or your cosigner’s credit history and financial records, your eligibility with Earnest also depends on your residency status. International students will need a Social Security number and permanent resident cosigner to qualify; without a cosigner, you’ll need to be a U.S. citizen or green card-holder yourself.

Other cases where you could be deemed ineligible include:

• Attending school part-time
• Attending a two-year college or trade school
• Seeking an associate’s degree
• A parent borrowing on behalf of your child
• A resident of Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Nevada, New Hampshire, Texas or Virginia

Keep in mind that there are reputable lenders serving borrowers who fall into some of the categories above. For example, Sallie Mae, College Ave and Wells Fargo all lend to part-time students. Likewise, if you’re comparing Earnest versus SoFi, you’ll see that the latter lender offers products in all 50 states and Washington D.C.

You can confirm your eligibility — but not your rate

It’s wise to shop around with multiple lenders before sitting down to apply for a student loan, as each application could result in a hard credit check that may ding your credit score, especially if the different checks aren’t conducted around the same time.

Earnest offers on-demand confirmation of your eligibility for a loan, but it doesn’t provide specific rate quotes. You would need to complete the formal application (and submit to the hard credit check) to see what fixed or variable rate would be available to you.

Other lenders, including CommonBond, allow you to view your potential interest rate in the same amount of time it takes Earnest to deem you eligible.

That said, however, Earnest’s student loan product just debuted in April 2019, so if you’re applying later, you could check back to see if it adds a quick rate-quote option in the future.

You can’t release your cosigner until the loan is paid off

Earnest scores a point for allowing eligible borrowers to apply without a cosigner — some of its competitors do require undergraduates to tack a cosigner onto their application.

However, Earnest loses a point in our eyes for not providing a cosigner release program. Lenders like Sallie Mae offer borrowers the ability to drop their guarantor after as few as 12 full and prompt payments. If awarding your mom, dad or non-parent cosigner with an early removal is important to you, you might be better off borrowing elsewhere.

Still, you could always remove your cosigner by refinancing your student loans — either with Earnest or a competing lender — sometime down the road.

Are Earnest student loans right for you?

There are a handful of to-dos before resorting to a private student loan at Earnest or any lender for that matter: completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), seeking private scholarships and state grants, applying for work-study and tapping into savings. The FAFSA is especially important, since federal student loans provide protections that private lenders don’t.

With those items crossed off, keep Earnest in mind for your private loan needs. Thanks to its competitive interest rates and flexible repayment options, it’s among our favorite lenders.

On the other hand, it won’t serve your needs if, for example, you’re attending school part-time or as an international student. Earnest could also fall short if you prefer a lender featuring a cosigner release policy.

And regardless of how you think Earnest stacks up, be sure to compare it with some of the other best private lenders offering student loans today.

Can you consolidate student loans while in school?

To brush up on the basics, remember that student loan consolidation occurs when you group your debt into a new, single loan with a weighted, average interest rate. You could accomplish this via a federal direct consolidation loan.

To be eligible for federal loan consolidation, you must either be enjoying your six-month grace period or already be in repayment — in other words, off campus and into the real world.

Refinancing takes consolidation a step further. It, too, groups your loans into one new loan, but it also could lower your interest rate. By reducing your rate, you’d pay less interest over the life of your loan, potentially saving you significant money when kept at the same term.

Say you borrowed $20,000 on a 10-year term and with an average rate of 7%. By refinancing that amount at 5% and for the same 10-year term, for example, you’d shave off $2,410 in interest over the life of the loan.

Refinancing could also allow you to choose a new lender, but note that only private lenders offer refinancing. This means you’ll lose exclusive protections on your federal debt since only federal loans feature access to income-driven repayment plans, flexible deferment and forbearance options, as well as pathways to loan forgiveness.

For this reason, if you decide you want to refinance federal student loans rather than consolidate them, make sure the benefits outweigh the drawbacks for your particular situation. And if you do go ahead with it, try to shop around for a good refinancing rate.

Can you refinance student loans while still in school?

Unlike with federal loans, private lenders employ underwriting criteria to gauge your ability to repay your new, refinanced loan (along with your other debt, if you have any). You typically need to have a strong credit score and proof of a steady income — or a cosigner who has both.

Unfortunately, being a college graduate is also among most lenders’ requirements. Generally, lenders require that refinancing borrowers have graduated from a Title IV school. An associate degree is sometimes acceptable.

But if you don’t have a degree (yet), consider these two lenders:

1. Earnest: If you’re within one semester of graduating, you could apply and be approved for refinancing a little ahead of schedule. You could also qualify if you’re a part-time student, enrolled less than “half-time.”
2. Citizens Bank: If you take a break from school and make 12 on-time payments toward your loans, you could refinance them without having earned a degree.
3. SunTrust Bank: If you only need to refinance private student loans, not federal ones, then SunTrust has an option too, so long as you loans are current.

Making in-school payments is the next best thing

If your goal of refinancing was to lower your interest rate, you’d likely have to wait until you’re a college grad.

With that said, there are measures you can take now to save money later.

Whether you have federal or private loans, making in-school payments can stop your balance from ballooning while you’re in the classroom.

For federal loans, contact your servicer to learn about how to make in-school payments. Although subsidized direct loans won’t accrue interest until you’re six months out of school, other federal loans will, so it’s wise to begin repayment ahead of schedule if you can afford it.

With a private lender, your in-school repayment options were (hopefully) presented at the time you decided to borrow. Lenders offer a mix of choices, including:

• Deferring payment until graduation, allowing interest to pile up
• Making small fixed payments to save some money on interest while you’re enrolled
• Making interest-only payments to keep your balance from growing at all
• Making full payments to attack your debt from the start

Of course, the more money you put toward your loan balance while you’re in school, the less you’ll have to pay when you graduate.

Laying the groundwork now to refinance later

If you begin making in-school payments, you’re not just saving money. You’re also building up your credit score.

In fact, 35% of your FICO score, one of the most commonly cited credit scores, is based on your debt payment history. If you start repaying your loans while you’re in school (and repay credit card debt on time), you’re starting to build that history.

That takes care of one of refinance companies’ underwriting criteria. However, there are more ways to put yourself in a position to refinance not long after receiving your degree.

Maybe you don’t have the bandwidth for a full-time job while in college, but scoring a part-time position or internship now could lead to a good-paying gig later.

Eventually, having that consistent paycheck will not only help you repay your loans, but also prove to refinance companies that you have the income to cover your newly consolidated debt.

That’s the silver lining of it all. Yes, you might not be eligible to refinance student loans while still in school, but you can begin strengthening your application for the future.