how to get a student loan statement

If you are concerned about your ability to pay, your statement includes information about how to change your repayment plan and possibly lower your total monthly payment. Use the contact information provided on the statement to contact your student loan servicer to learn more about your options.

The final key detail that your statement provides is itemized loan information, such as your current balance, original balance, interest rate for each loan and the amount of interest you have paid for each loan. This information will help you understand how you are paying down your debt over time.

You can use this information to consider changes like whether to make payments beyond what is due to pay off specific loans with higher interest rates or adjust your monthly payment to pay your loans off faster.

If you have questions about your student loan statement, the best thing to do is call your loan servicer. You can call your servicer directly or contact the Federal Student Aid Information Center, also known as the FSAIC, at 800-433-3243.

10 Steps to Minimize Student Loan Debt

Tags: education , student loans , student debt , paying for college

About Student Loan Ranger

Student Loan Ranger helps prospective and current students and recent graduates make sense of borrowing options, student debt and loan repayment. The blog is currently authored by Education Finance Council , a national trade association representing nonprofit and state-based higher education finance organizations; GreenPath Financial Wellness , a national nonprofit organization that provides financial counseling and education to empower people to lead financially healthy lives; and The Institute for College Access & Success , an independent nonprofit organization that conducts research, analysis and advocacy on making higher education more available, affordable and equitable. Previous blog contributors include the Financial Counseling Association of America, National Foundation for Credit Counseling and American Student Assistance.

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Official Servicer of Federal Student Aid

You have a network of support to help you succeed with your federal student loan repayment. Find out how Federal Student Aid partners with loan servicers to be here when you need help.

You can visit StudentAid.gov to see a list of our trusted federal student loan servicers , or submit a complaint directly to the FSA Ombudsman.

Common actions and topics...

Attention Great Lakes will no longer be servicing federal student loans as of June 2023. Nelnet, whom we've shared the same parent company with since 2018, will be your new student loan servicer. Like two sides of the same coin, we'll continue to work together with the shared commitment of helping you successfully manage your student loans. For more information about the transfer to Nelnet, visit Nelnet.com/transfer .

Get to Know Your Monthly Billing Statement

Your student loan statement shouldn't be a mystery. We designed it with you in mind—to provide you with clear, easy-to-read information about all of your accounts. Whether you receive an email or a paper statement, you'll find all of the essential account information in one concise summary every month.

Learn more about your billing statement

New features and at-a-glance billing information will help you quickly find what's important to you.

Get in touch with us

Find options for getting in touch with us or making your payment. There's also timely information such as tax filing tips or signing up for Auto Pay .

Review your current information

On the paper statement you'll find any payments we've received in the last 30 days and the amount of your scheduled monthly payment. If you have a past due amount, they'll be included here, too. On the email statement, you'll find your total amount due and your due date. To find any payment history, log into your account to view your billing statement online .

See your progress

This is where you can find a snapshot of your accounts—how much you borrowed, how much you've repaid, and how much you still owe. Each month these numbers help you see that you're making progress repaying your student loans. If you receive an email statement, log into your account to see your progress online.

Make your payment

Making your payment is easy. The fastest way to pay is to make a payment online or, if you sign up for Auto Pay , we'll automatically withdraw your payment for you. If you receive a paper statement, we've included a tear-off slip noting your monthly payment amount and due date.

Find answers

We've provided the answers to some commonly asked questions. If you receive an email, follow the link to our website for answers. On the paper statement, you'll find the answers on the back of your statement. If you can't find what you're looking for, please get in touch with us .

Get all the details

The Accounts in this Statement section provides a breakdown of each loan. You'll find your interest rate, the lifetime amount paid, and much more. It's important to note that if you have multiple student loans at the same interest rate in an account, those loans are grouped together and shown as a single amount on your statement. You can see your loans broken down individually on your Payment Schedule and Disclosure or your Account Summary . If you receive the email statement, log into your account to see your Accounts in this Statement . If you receive a paper statement, it's on the second sheet of paper.

Remember, it's easy to view your statement online each month.

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How to Get a Student Loan Without Your Parents’ Support

By Brian O'Connell

May 11, 2023

Conventional wisdom has it that getting a student loan is a family affair involving students and their parents. But instead, it is a tag-team effort to find the education financing needed to get a newly-minted college student on campus with enough funding to cover college costs.

The truth is, no law says a student and parent need to both be involved in borrowing money for college, especially when it comes to federal student loans. However, when you think about the sweet spot families should be aiming for with student loans, that makes sense.

• Students need the money to pay for a good college or university and get on with the process of preparing for the real world, primarily through quality academics and internships at good companies.
• Parents want their children to get the financial aid they need to go to college, but ideally, like their names off the loan and no obligations to repay that debt.

There are several ways college students can get student loans without a parent borrower or cosigner. These include federal student loans, increasing federal student loan limits by qualifying as an independent student, getting a private student loan with someone other than the parent as a cosigner, and tuition installment plans.

Read on to learn how to get student loans without your parents’ support.

Focus on Free Money First

It’s always best to exhaust any free financial aid options before turning to a student loan.

Free money includes grants and scholarships, tuition waivers, and gifts from family members like grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Consider tuition installment plans, which let you pay the college bills in monthly installments over the academic term for a small up-front fee.

Perhaps friends and family might be willing to provide a no-interest loan.

Four Action Steps to Get a Student Loan Without a Parent

Although it can be difficult to get a student loan without your parents’ information or credit history to support your application, it is possible, at least for some people. You can get student loans without parents if you’re classified as an independent student, or, in some cases, a dependent student.

If you’re wondering how to get a loan for college without your parents’ help, leverage the right strategies to get a parent-free loan:

1. Fill out the FAFSA form

The one step in the “no-parent” student loan that requires a parent’s involvement is the FAFSA form. The FAFSA is a prerequisite for a student to get a federal student loan . If the student is dependent, parental information is required on the form. Signing the FAFSA does not obligate the parent to borrow or repay their child’s federal student loans.

2. Explore going independent with your college loan

Uncle Sam, via the U.S. Department of Education, does offer various loopholes to move your “dependent” status to an “independent” status.

Students can’t declare themselves independent, even if they live independently and are financially self-sufficient.

There are very few options for becoming independent that are under the student’s control. The main options are getting married, having children or legal dependents other than a spouse, serving on active duty with the U.S. Armed Forces and enrolling in graduate school. Otherwise, the student will have to wait until they turn age 24 and are automatically independent to go to college.

Besides these options, college students can ask the school’s financial aid office for a dependency override in unusual circumstances. But, dependency overrides are very rare and involve extreme cases, such as an abusive household and abandonment.

The college financial aid administrator will not provide a dependency override merely because the parents are unwilling to complete the FAFSA or verification or because the parents are unwilling to pay for college.

Suppose parents can’t or won’t provide their financial information and have cut off all financial support to the student for whatever reason. In that case, the student may qualify for just unsubsidized student loans.

3. Check out tuition installment plans

The vast majority of U.S. colleges and universities offer tuition installment plans that can help you take a bite-sized approach to paying down tuition costs – and curb the need for any student loan. If you’ve saved up enough money, paying your tuition via monthly installments buys you some time to so you don’t need to make that huge upfront, lump-sum payment.

Even if you steer $2,500 of your savings toward $10,000 worth of college tuition costs for a semester, that’s $2,500 less than you’ll need to borrow in a student loan scenario. So ask your bursar’s office about signing up for a tuition payment plan.

Tuition installment plans are also a good option if the student is trying to work their way through college.

4. Check your SAR

Once the FAFSA form is complete, the student and their family will get a Student Aid Report (SAR) in a few days or, more likely, in a few weeks. On that form is all the data recorded on the form by students and parents.

When you get your Student Aid Report, check it thoroughly for accuracy. The information included is used to calculate the amount of money available in financial aid for the student. If the amount isn’t enough for your college costs, the student can apply for federal student loans (as long as they remain under the loan maximum cap) without getting their parents involved.

Consider Alternative Loan Options

As students have sought alternatives to federal and typical student loans, a new type of student loan has become more popular. For example, Edly offers a student loan that does not require a cosigner, or any credit history. Edly’s loans are repaid based on the borrower’s income, with no payments if income is below $30,000. This adds some protection, but eligibility will be determined by your specific program’s graduation and job placement statistics.

Learn more about Edly’s income-based repayment loan.

Hit the Sweet Spot with a Parentless Federal Student Loan

How do you meet those unique goals and get your child on the path to a college degree while keeping mom and dad at arm’s length on any student loan transactions? One good way is a student loan without any parental help.

A “parentless” student loan is easier to achieve than you might think when focusing on public and not private student loans.

Most U.S. college students are eligible for Federal Direct Loans (also known as “Stafford Loans”), which do not depend on the applicant’s credit history and do not require a cosigner. The applicant does need to file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which usually requires the parent’s financial information if the student is a dependent student, but this does not obligate the parents to borrow or to cosign the loans.

“Dependent Versus Independent” Student Loan Options

Whether the student is considered a dependent or independent student on the FAFSA affects federal student loan limits.

If the student is independent, parental information is not required on the FAFSA, and the loan limits on the Federal Direct Loans are higher.

How high? This table shows the loan limits based on dependency status as well as Direct subsidized and unsubsidized loan amounts:

As shown in the table, independent undergraduate students get an additional $4,000 per year in annual loan limits during the first and second years and $5,000 per year during the third and subsequent years.

Graduate students and students in medical school are automatically considered independent students.

In addition, the aggregate loan limits for independent undergraduate students are $57,500, compared with $31,000 for dependent undergraduate students. Graduate students can borrow up to $138,500 ($224,000 for medical school students), including undergraduate student loans.

Graduate students may also be eligible for the Federal Grad PLUS loan, which depends on the borrower’s credit history but does not require a cosigner. However, if the graduate student has an adverse credit history, they may still get a Grad PLUS loan with an endorser, which is like a cosigner.

There is no shortage of caveats in classifying a college student as dependent or independent when qualifying for student loans without parental help.

Uncle San considers you an independent college student if you’re 24 years old (or older) as of December 31 of the financial aid award year. Therefore, you’d qualify for higher loan amounts than a dependent college student.

Additionally, suppose a college student’s parents have both passed on. If the student is a military veteran or if the student is married or has dependents of their own, that student (even if they are an undergraduate) is deemed independent.

Special circumstances may apply, as well. For example, suppose a student’s parents can’t qualify for a Federal Parent PLUS loan because they have bad credit or other financial hardship issues. In that case, the student can qualify for the same loan limits as independent students on their Federal Direct loans.

A Word on Private Student Loans

You can get a private student loan without a parent, as well, but there’s a pretty big catch.

Private student loans generally require a creditworthy cosigner , but the cosigner does not need to be your parents. Someone else with a good or excellent credit score can cosign the loan. However, convincing a non-parent to co-sign a private student loan is hard. If you have a mentor, grandparent, or trusted friend with sterling credit who will cosign your loan, you may be able to qualify for a private student loan without getting your parents involved.

A few private lenders and products, like Ascent’s Non-Cosigned Outcomes-Based Loan , use criteria other than credit and income, such as GPA or major, to establish eligibility.

Keep in mind that private loans do not offer the same repayment options and benefits as federal loans. These include income-driven repayment plans, a chance for subsidized loans, opportunities for deferment or forbearance if you lose your job, the potential for student loan forgiveness, and much more. In addition, private student loans may have lower or higher interest rates than federal student loans, so be sure to do your research.

The Parental View

For parents, there is no obligation to repay a college loan taken out by their student that they didn’t cosign or apply for themselves.

Mom and dad can still contribute to their child’s college education in myriad ways, such as tax-free gifts, college 529 plans, or the American Opportunity Tax Credit, for example. Moreover, they’re free and clear of any legal obligation to repay student-only federal or private loans with these options.

That might be the ideal scenario for parents who want to help out with a child’s college costs – but only on a limited basis where they call the shots.

Alternative Funding Options 

It can be difficult to get a student loan with your parents’ help.

If you can’t get a student loan, try these alternative funding options:

• Scholarships . There are a range of nonprofits, professional organizations, and businesses that offer scholarships based on academic merit, financial need, co-curricular talents, and other factors.
• Grants . Likewise, there are a range of federal, state, and private grants available, as well as those offered by colleges and nonprofits.
• Emergency student loans . If you need a short-term loan to cover an emergency situation, your school may be able to help with an emergency student loan.

Dependent vs Independent Student: What’s the Difference?

The federal Government, lenders, colleges, and other organizations categorize students as either dependent or independent based on certain criteria. Anyone studying a graduate or professional degree is seen as independent, while undergraduate students may be categorized as dependent or independent depending on various specific factors. If you’re wondering how to take out a student loan without your parents’ involvement, it’s important to know whether you’re considered an independent or dependent student.

If you meet any of the following requirements, you’ll be seen as independent:

• You’re studying for a master’s degree or a PhD.
• You’re aged 24 years or older on January 1 of the year you apply for financial aid.
• Both your parents died since you were 13, or you’ve been in foster care or a ward of the court since this age.
• A court has ruled that you are an emancipated minor, or awarded legal guardianship of you to someone other than a parent or stepparent.
• You’re married or seperated.
• You have dependents who you will primarily support during the award year.
• You’re an active member or a veteran of the US armed forces.
• You’re either homeless or at risk of homelessness.

At Savingforcollege.com, our goal is to help you make smart decisions about saving and paying for education. Some of the products featured in this article are from our partners from whom we receive compensation, but this doesn’t influence our evaluations. Our opinions are our own, not those of any bank, investment manager, or student lender.  

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