Tips for Making Friends in College

October 10, 2019

If you’re like many students, starting college means striking out on your own, forging your path through life, and developing the skills that are sure to result in financial success. At least that’s the dream, right? But what happens when going off to college means leaving behind the familiarity of your family and friends? Or living in a new city that you have no idea how to navigate? What about striving to make ends meet financially and finally understanding what it means to budget? What is Ramen anyway?

College isn’t always what we conjure up in our heads. While it is a time of self-growth and development, getting a foothold in your new chapter can be challenging. Because of that, we’re sharing a few tips to help you embrace the unfamiliar and start making new friends in college.

Get out of your comfort zone.

We can give you countless ideas, but they all start with this one piece of advice. If you want to make new friends, you’ll have to get a little uncomfortable. But when you think about it, that’s a massive part of what college is about, right? To create new experiences and meet people, you’ll have to leave the comfort of your dorm room and put yourself out there. We’ll talk about a few different ways to do this, but it’s essential to go into this process expecting to do more than just what’s familiar. This is about being “ok” with not having a grasp on this phase of life.

Make friends in your dorm.

At no other time in your life will you be living with this many people. Living in a dorm doesn’t just mean living with roommates or suitemates. It means there’s a whole building of people you can get to know. Most dorms are equipped with community rooms of some kind, so an easy way to branch out and get to know people would be by doing your homework in a community room instead of your own bedroom. Since many students live on campus and don’t need a car, you could offer to carpool to the market or even create “watch parties” of your favorite TV shows. Post opportunities for group outings on the bulletin board and keep the RA in the loop of any sight-seeing trips around the city. The more you engage with people, the more your relationships will grow over time.

Bonus tip: a sure-fire way to make friends in college is to ask your mom to bake some treats and share them with people in your dorm — everybody loves cookies.

Consider an open door policy.

Whenever it’s appropriate, don’t be afraid to leave your room door open. Besides being a signal that you welcome small talk, you never know when another student will hear what music you’re playing, show you’re watching or even overhear what you’re talking about with your roommates. Remember that the freshmen on your floor are looking for opportunities to connect, just like you are.

Looking for friends? Join the club.

College campuses are full of extracurricular opportunities. From academic organizations and Greek life to hobby-based clubs and everything in between, there’s likely a way you can get plugged in with students who share a common interest. “Welcome Week” is a popular semester kick-off event where clubs set up booths and give out freebies like food and t-shirts. Do your homework and make a list of some you’d like to know more about. Pace yourself, and resist the urge to sign up for everything that remotely sounds interesting. When you first start college, it can be fun to get an idea of what each group is like, but overextending yourself can backfire.

Joining a fraternity or sorority is a fail-proof way of making friends in college. Many fraternities and sororities focus on community involvement and leadership development, and there’s always an opportunity for an upperclassman to guide you through your college years. If Greek life is for you, take the time to understand the process of recruiting, rushing and pledging here.

Get an on-campus job.

Want a fool-proof way of making friends in college? Live and work in the same place. Whether it’s at the school bookstore or coffeeshop, you can literally get paid and get to know people at the same time. Visit your campus Career Services center and they’ll give you a list of all the jobs you can apply for. Better yet, they’ll be able to coach you on your interview skills and help make your resume irresistible to employers. If you’re not making regular appointments with the Career Services staff you’re missing out on a very valuable resource.

Break the ice with a classmate.

It may seem hard, but you can do it. Get past the awkward and get to know a classmate. If just introducing yourself isn’t your speed, then ask a classmate if they understood the assignment or if the class is what they thought it’d be. People may shy away from talking about themselves initially, so forging a bond over the dislike of oxford commas is a fine place to start.

If you’re assigned a study group, be active and participate in discussion. Take opportunities to ask questions and pay attention to what your classmates are saying.

Making friends in college might seem like a daunting task, but just be yourself, get out of your comfort zone, and it will start to come naturally for you.

Learn more about navigating the college years

What I Would Have Told Myself in College – Barbara Thomas

Advice From A University of Tennessee Knoxville Graduate on Attending College

Note: Links to other websites are provided as a convenience only. A link does not imply SouthEast Bank’s sponsorship or approval of any other site. SouthEast Bank does not control the content of these sites.

How Applying for Private Student Loans Affects Your Credit Score

Whenever you apply to take out a loan, a credit inquiry from one or several credit reporting agencies will likely occur. If you have a solid credit history, the effects are usually minimal. However, the effects will typically be larger for someone with little-to-no credit. According to an article by Bev O’Shea posted on Nerdwallet, whatever impact your credit score suffers should fall off after 12 months, and after about 24 months, the inquiry should disappear from your credit report entirely. There’s also an important distinction between a “soft” and “hard” credit inquiry. A “soft pull,” as it’s known, can be done just in connection with pre-qualification for a loan, whether it’s a credit card offer you receive in the mail, mortgage, student loan, or car loan. Some employers will do a soft pull of your credit as well. Soft pulls do not impact your credit score. A “hard pull” generally requires your consent and happens when you apply for the credit you’re seeking. It’s the hard pulls that show up on your credit report. It’s important to monitor your credit report and dispute any hard inquiries you didn’t authorize. In the case of private student loans, a prequalification will not affect your credit, whereas applying for a loan will show up on your report.

Applying for Multiple Private Student Loans

So, what if you submit multiple applications? Will they all affect your credit score? It’s hard to know for sure, as credit-scoring model companies don’t provide a lot of detail about their models. Generally speaking, credit-scoring models appear to take into consideration that if an applicant has multiple inquiries for a student loan they may be shopping for the best rate. One key point is that the closer those inquires are together, the less impact it may have on your credit score. In other words, shopping around to find the best loan option for you should not affect your credit score dramatically and is likely not a major cause for concern. By applying for multiple private student loans, you can see which lender will actually give you the best rate – important when it comes to saving money over the life of your loan. ELFI offers a variety of private student loan options for financing your undergraduate or graduate education, as well as private student loan options for parents.* Check out our full list of frequently asked questions or contact ELFI at 1-844-601-3534 to speak with a Personal Loan Advisor. *Subject to credit approval. Terms and conditions apply. Note: Links to other websites are provided as a convenience only. A link does not imply SouthEast Bank’s sponsorship or approval of any other site. SouthEast Bank does not control the content of these sites.

Female medical student standing next to professor

2019-10-17

Medical School Debt: Why Now May Be the Time for You to Refinance Student Loans

The road to becoming a doctor is a long and expensive one. After 4 to 5 years of undergraduate studies, 4 years of medical school, and 3 to 7 years of residency, many graduates are well into their 30’s before they earn a doctor’s income. Residency does come with a paycheck, but the average Resident Physician makes $58,803 a year, according to glassdoor.com. It's hard to imagine much of that is applied to medical school debt. Americans owe a total of $1.6 trillion in federal and private student loans and newly-minted doctors carry a good portion of those loans, carrying an average of $179,000 in medical school debt, six times more than the average graduate. Student loans can be a financial and emotional burden, even for doctors, and consolidating and refinancing those loans can be a relief on both fronts. With consolidation, you can roll multiple loans into one, leaving you with a single monthly payment. This simplifies repayment. Refinancing means agreeing to new and different terms of your loan with the goal of getting a better interest rate or term. Better rates and terms can make medical school debt more manageable.

Why Now is the Time to Refinance

Monthly principal and interest payments on student loans can bury many borrowers. A lower interest rate can help you save thousands of dollars over the life of your loans. Better rates also mean you can pay down that medical school debt faster, also helping you pay less in the long run. The importance of refinancing now is that you can start saving immediately. Depending on what you qualify for through private lenders like ELFI¹, you could lower your interest rate, have a single monthly payment, lock in a fixed interest rate, and more. All helping you to enjoy the fruits of your hard work faster. Another reason to refinance now is that the Federal Reserve Board lowered interest rates twice already this year. This federal interest rate applies to banks—it’s the amount of interest they charge each other to lend federal reserve funds. The benefit for you, as a borrower, is that the less interest banks pay, the less you can potentially pay.

Refinancing Federal vs Private Loans

In our blogs, we regularly discuss the difference between private student loans and government student loans. Keep in mind, the differences between these loans come back into play for refinancing. Regardless of your initial loan type, when you refinance your medical school debt, you take out a new loan with a private lender – ideally at a meaningfully lower interest rate. With this new private loan, you can lose access to federal benefits like:

Income-driven repayment plans
Ability to pause payments through deferment and forbearance programs
Loan forgiveness programs

ELFI has a team of Personal Loan Advisors who can help you decide if refinancing makes sense for your situation. As always, we encourage borrowers to look for student loan refinancing loan options with no origination fees or application fees first.

Downfalls to Refinancing Medical School Debt

Other than losing out on federal borrower benefits, refinancing your loans might not make sense right now. If you already have a low-interest loan, you might not see much savings. To see what you can save, use ELFI’s savings estimator tool. Additionally, some banks charge fees that could potentially offset any interest savings. With ELFI, you’ll never pay:

Application fees
Origination fees
Prepayment penalties

Finally, if you’re still in your residency or fellowship, it might make sense to wait until you have a higher income or better credit score, both of which will impact the interest rates available to you. Or you might considering having a cosigner to help you achieve an even lower rate.

Other Options to Payoff Medical School Debt

While refinancing can lower your monthly payments and get you a better interest rate, there are other options for lowering your medical school debt. Consider overpaying your monthly amount. This option isn’t realistic for all borrowers, but if you’re savvy enough to live simply or lucky enough to apply a spouse’s paycheck, you can quickly pay down that medical school debt. Some graduates might even have the option of taking out a zero-interest (or ultra low-interest) loan from relatives or friends. Once the student loan is repaid, you can put the excess funds toward other debts or investments.

Understanding Your Loan Refinance Options

It is important to explore all your options when opening an initial student loan. It's equally as important to explore the best refinancing options for reducing your medical school debt. If you need help navigating those options, contact ELFI. As pioneers in the space, our management team has over 30 years of expertise in student loans and student loan refinancing. ¹Subject to credit approval. Terms and conditions apply. Note: Links to other websites are provided as a convenience only. A link does not imply SouthEast Bank’s sponsorship or approval of any other site. SouthEast Bank does not control the content of these sites.

2019-10-16

Can I Refinance My Student Loans and Go Back to School?

Many Americans, at one time or another, have thought about their student loans as they contemplate whether or not they can afford to go back to school and pursue additional higher education. Maybe you were able to partially pay your way through college, but couldn’t quite close the gap, so you turned to federal student loans or private loans to make ends meet. You may have been accepted into your first-choice school and you made the financial leap using student loans to fund the degree of your dreams. Whatever the case may be, you’re now in a situation where you need to change your current student loan structure in order to go back to school and take the next step in your education. Student loan refinancing may be the best option to help you lower your monthly payments and allow you to go back to school with financial peace of mind.

**So I Can Refinance My Student Loans and Go Back to School - But Why Should I?**

The short answer to the question “Can I refinance my student loans and go back to school?” is often a “yes”. There are lots of options for dealing with student debt, and those options change depending on the amount of your current student loan debt, whether your current student loan is federal or private, and what you’re looking to achieve through student loan refinancing. This means that no matter what your financial situation, you can almost certainly take advantage of a student loan refinance through a reputable private lenders such as ELFI¹ provided you can meet credit criteria established by each lender. One advisor stipulates that you should only take out new student loans that won’t overburden your financial situation by taking on too much debt or “overleveraging”. Overleveraging means taking on more debt than your income can comfortably pay for, as measured by financial ratios such as “debt-to-income ratio,” or DTI. If you already owe a lot on your current student loans and have the financial means to afford new student loans, then you might want to consider refinancing the student loans you already have to make room for the new monthly debt payments you will have on the additional student loans you take out. That’s good news for graduates who shelled out a pretty penny for their undergraduate degree. In general, the best reasons to refinance your student loans - if you’re taking on new debt to go back to school - would be to:

Get a lower interest rate (and potentially lower monthly payments)
To take advantage of new federal or private loan programs that may be financially suitable to you, or
To consolidate the student loans you already have with a single, private lender rather than dealing with multiple lenders on your existing student loans.

Is a Student Loan Refinancing My Best Option?

Student loan refinancing does have some benefits that other options, such as debt consolidation programs, would not (like allowing you to release a cosigner from your previous loans). One big benefit you’ll likely receive from student loan refinancing is a lower monthly payment. The federal student loan debt consolidation program, unlike student loan refinancing with private lenders, averages the interest rates of your existing federal loans and rounds up the weighted average interest rate by an eighth of a point, so while the interest rates of some of your loans may go down, others will go up to meet the average set in the consolidation process. That means that your interest costs likely won’t change all that much, if at all. There are many reasons to explore refinancing your student loans, including improving your interest rate, payment timeline, or ability to take on new loans with the money you could save each month. Other benefits include releasing a cosigner from one or more loans, getting better customer service or benefits than you currently get from your lender, or having the convenience of making a single monthly payment instead of multiple payments. Consider using an industry-leading private lender such as ELFI for a fast loan prequalification experience (in as little 2 minutes!) that can get you the student loan funding you need.

What Factors Should I Consider When Deciding on a Student Loan Refinance?

A few of the factors most graduates need to consider when refinancing their student loans have to do with not only payment size, interest rates and terms, but also the type of loan they will refinance into and their own personal financial situation. Keep in mind how this may improve your ability to get better terms or rates on your current loan or on any new student loans you end up pursuing after your refinance in order to go back to school. For example, many graduates considering a student loan refinance in order to go back to school don’t know that there is no federal student loan refinancing program. Both private and federal student loans can be refinanced with a private lender, but neither federal nor private loans can be refinanced into new federal loans. What you started with is what you get when it comes to your federal student loan - unless you refinance with a private lender. Federal student loan rates are set by the US congress and mandated by law - you can’t get a better deal or any rate concessions the way you might be able to do with a private lender. Another big factor when it comes to deciding on a student loan refinance is your personal financial situation. While this is often the first question that graduates looking at a student loan refinance ask themselves, it should be asked again - can you afford new student loans to go back to school, even if you get the refinancing terms and rates you want for your current student loans?

How Do I Choose the Right Time to Refinance My Student Loans?

Some financial experts and financial bloggers, such as NerdWallet, suggest refinancing the minute you have the credit score and income to support getting a lower interest rate, regardless of whether you want to go back to school and take on new loans in the process. Beyond this, and the obvious timing issues presented by deciding on whether, or when, to go back to school, be aware that your income, credit score and debt situation will have an overall impact on whether you can get the student loan refinance terms you want. Making sure to weigh all your options and pick a reliable lender who can help walk you through all your loan options. ELFI’s personal Loan Advisors are trained to help you navigate this process and to simplify it for you.

How Do I Choose the Right Student Loan Refinancing Option?

While there are many reputable student loan refinance providers available, expert and impartial voices like NerdWallet and Student Loan Sherpa agree that ELFI (Education Loan Finance) is one of the best. With multiple loan options, flexible repayment structures, and best-in-class customer service, ELFI can make your dreams of refinancing your student loans and going back to school a reality. ELFI also goes a step beyond and provides each borrower a personal loan advisor to help them navigate the process.

Final Thoughts

No matter what your degree field or career aspirations, most graduates will be faced with the choice of whether to refinance their student loans, when to do it, and how to do it in a way that fits their lifestyle. Using a reputable student loan refinance company like ELFI can help you pick the best student loan refinancing option for you, especially if you intend to take out new loans and go back to school. Check ELFI out today for the best and latest in student loan refinance options and get on the road to the career of your dreams! ¹Subject to credit approval. Terms and conditions apply. Note: Links to other websites are provided as a convenience only. A link does not imply SouthEast Bank’s sponsorship or approval of any other site. SouthEast Bank does not control the content of these sites.