Deeply scrutinize benefits offered by your existing lender.

You will rarely find companies that are ready to consolidate private loans (no matter who the lender is). True, you’ll find some companies offering some particular types of consolidation.

They might also offer some special types of “refinancing” for private loans. But to qualify for those; they will require that you already have currently running loans deals with them.

And such requirement tends to differ from one lender to the other; some lenders require that you have 1 loan, with them. There are lenders who might require that as a minimum consolidated amount’s 50% will be with them. So you have your best chances when you start your research from your existing lender(s).

Shop around to consolidate private student loan.

Just as mentioned, there are only a handful of companies that do not hold hard conditions for letting you benefit from their consolidation and/or refinance program. If you take a little bit of pain while researching, you’ll definitely find one that maintains lucrative offers.

So you must shop closely while keeping ‘both the eyes’ on your lenders’ loan rates/terms. And do not get distracted from those by the rates of interest set by the government. Did you know that interest rates set by the government are pretty much reliant one Prime Rates and LIBOR Index?

What’s your credit status?

‘How is your credit?’ This is perhaps the most essential question you are to be asked. Do you have any idea how things looked like when as you initially drew the loan(s)? And you surely know that private loans typically are based on credit. And consider your case when you have poor credit and no co-signer. In those cases, your existing rate is likely to be inevitably high.

But if somehow your credit recovered, you should not face any problem to qualify for standard PL consolidation. If your rate has good credit, it should be close to the estimated Prime Rate. If you’re still caught up in poor credit, it might be 7-8% or beyond the prime rate.

And did you pay any fees for taking those loans out in the first place? You should know that the majority of the companies (but not all) would charge more fees for consolidating your loans (1 to 3% is pretty common, but don’t be stunned if you see fees approaching nearly 10%) … such fees [with maintaining a standard loan with variable rate] are among the chief reasons you are sometimes better-off when you do not consolidate private student loan.

So think the whole thing over!