My experience with GL....
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I talked to one of the founders at GL last week. He stayed on the phone for me for 28 mins talking to me about my options. One of the first things I wanted to know was: what is in it for GL? His reply was as stated in their web-site (
www.graduateleverage.com). That the whole situation stemmed from a conversation that was had during class one day about consolidating their loans post-graduation, nobody knew jack so they came up with a project to research the industry. Presented to the class, got the credit and didn't think much of it. Then they rec'd a call from the med school (or law school, one of them) asking if they would come present what they researched to the graduating seniors, things snow-balled and they realized that they may be on to something. The whole idea behind GL is to use "collective bargaining" to "leverage" better bene's from lenders. Great, but how does GL make out on this? Well, the founder told me that all school loans are subsidized by gov't. So, even though we pay 2.87% on our loans, the bank gets an additional margin added by Da G. During the "collective bargaining" Graduate Leverage negotiates to receive part of that subsidy in return for facilitating the transaction between grad students (read "low risk / high return borrowers") and traditonal student loan providers (read "Sallie Mae, American Educational Service, Great Lakes Higher Ed, KHEAA, Ed Financial, etc.). So, indeed, "the butcher does not butcher meat out of the kindness of his heart".
Their recommendation for out of school students is to go with AES (has something to do with Perkins Loan rates - I don't know anything about this). For inschool consolidation, they recommended EdFinancial (they're out of TN, I ckd the BBB and they are legit). I am still looking for anyone else who went with GL or is thinking about it. After reviewing their website, talking to one of the founders (who by the way gave me his cell number to call back directly if I needed) and seeing what else is out there, I'm going to roll with GL.
One more quick question, does anyone know what was the initial event that sparked this end-run around the current inschool prohibition of consolidating? I'm sort of curious.
Hope this helps. Keep up the exchange of info - this might help save someone thousands of dollars!
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"Whatever happens, don't panic." -- Woobz
