Co-signer and no co-signer loans need to be considered when researching your student loan consolidation info options. Often when the primary borrower has poor credit, they ask a secondary party to guarantee to pay for the loan and they are called a co-signer.

Students often have limited or no credit cards, no car loans and very rarely a home mortgage. Because of this, students often have no credit history. And, as is the case with most of us in our younger years, they may have made some unwise decisions. They often end up with a balance on their credit card that they can't repay with monthly payments.

Not having a credit history or having one that is poor due to late payments will put the credit card holder in risk of being in a high risk category. Any potential lender will be looking closely at your credit history, even those from federally funded programs. If these situations apply to you, your loan may be denied or in some cases be approved but with a high interest percentage applied to the loan incase you default.

Applicants with little credit history or poor credit can and should obtain a co-signer. Co-signers are normally one or both of the borrower?s parents. Loan officers will look then at the parent's FICO score, outstanding debt to income ratio, repayment history and other standard factors in deciding whether to grant the loan. Now, it is up to the parents credit for determining what the interest rate will be. Those who have the better credit histories will usually get lower interest rates on loans than someone who applies with bad credit.

One of the most popular programs shows that a 4% interest rate will cost $5,489 and with 6% the amount will go up to $10,647. Due to the way interest rates are compounded, this amount is possible when borrowing such a large amount.

Students and parents are often financing up to $100,000 for an undergraduate education. Even if you make the interest payments while the student is in school, so that it won't add to your balance owed, the interest would be $567 at a 6.8% interest rate every month. The annual amount you will pay for interest will be almost sixty-six hundred dollars.

When you lower that rate to just 5% as is with Perkins loans, the totals drop to $417 every month and $4,820 every year. And don?t forget that the example we have shown is assuming repayment begins right away. Holding off on making payments until six months after you are out of college, will cause the amounts to be much higher if it?s not been deferred.

If you would like to improve your chances of getting the best terms and paying the lowest amount of interest over the life of the loan, having a co-signer with excellent credit will help. Try working with the numbers with one of the many online loan calculators. This information will form a crucial part of any student loan consolidation info.Jacob Smith is a published expert author of many student consolidation loan information and Student Loan Consolidation Info articles and is a full time student and writer for - My Student Loan Consolidation Information your one-stop online student resource for Student Consolidation Loan Information.