My name is Stephanie Wells, here from MEFA, and I’d like to talk to you about comparing college loan options. MEFA is a quasi-state authority, and we have been in business for nearly 45 years as a non-profit lender. We also offer great college savings plans, like the state’s 529 plan, and more importantly, we also offer free guidance and education to students and families.

We offer straightforward advice, guidance, programs, and services, and all of the guidance and education we provide for students and families is free of charge, including our calculators, videos, blogs, and other resources that we’ll talk about today. MEFA has great relationships with colleges all over the country, especially here in Massachusetts, and we are able to help families with those college expenses Let’s talk about how private loans [00:01:00] work.

First, we’ll look at the steps on how to borrow a private loan, a quick overview. First thing you’ll want to do is determine the amount that you’ll need to borrow based on your actual college bill or an estimated cost of attendance. The amount that you’re going to borrow doesn’t have to be the full amount that you owe.

In fact, we’ll talk about ways to shave that down so you’re not borrowing the full amount that you owe. Borrowing should be the last resort. Once you’ve decided how much you’re going to need to borrow based on your bill or cost of attendance and the financial aid you received, then you’ll want to select your lender.

So there are lots of resources that you can go to to find different lender, um, lenders that are out there, such as college lender lists that might be on a college’s website, college loan comparison tools such as ELMSelect, and recommendations from trusted resources such as college [00:02:00] administrators, the financial aid office, or even school counselors in organizations like MEFA.

Then you’ll want to decide who is gonna be the primary borrower. If it, the student is an undergraduate, they will most likely need a co-borrower or creditworthy co-borrower. Once you’ve decided who is going to be the co-borrowers and borrowers on the loan in addition to the student, then you can submit your application online.

Now, most lenders do offer quick, instant credit decisions such as with MEFA, so it shouldn’t take you too long hopefully to fill out those applications. Then once you’ve been approved for the loan and you’ve signed all of your loan agreements, the college will then certify your loan amount online to make sure that you’re not borrowing more than the cost of attendance minus your financial aid offer.

After the loan is certified, the college will determine when the loan will be dispersed. Typically, 50% of the loan is dispersed for the fall semester, and the other [00:03:00] 50% is set up for the spring semester

So that’s a quick overview of the process. We’ll dig into that a little bit more, but let’s talk about loan terminology, some common terms that you may have heard before and how it relates to education lending. So the lender is the organization that is going to provide your loan funds. Now, many students are borrowing through the federal government for their federal direct loans, which could be the subsidized and/or unsubsidized loan that they see in their financial aid offer.

The federal government can also offer income-based repayment options for student loans. They are also the lender for the Federal Parent PLUS Loan. Now, with the Parent PLUS Loan, that is not considered financial aid. If you’re looking at that loan, you would need to apply for it and be approved. Keep in mind that there are caps that are going into place on July 1st of 2026, so you cannot borrow more than $20,000 a year with the new [00:04:00] caps in place on the PLUS Loan, and that is also gonna be capped at an aggregate limit of 65,000 per student.

So if you need more than 20,000 a year for four years, you will definitely want to be looking at other loan options beyond the Parent PLUS. So let’s talk about some state-based entities like MEFA. MEFA would be a state-based lender. And due to the source of funding that we, many of us use, state-based lenders can often offer a lower range of interest rates.

State-based lenders like MEFA also provide free guidance and resources in their communities to help students and families make smart financing plans. We also help students and families with applying for financial aid and understanding the entire college enrollment process. Interest rates are often tied to the strength of the co-borrower or borrower’s credit and the repayment option that you choose.

Whether it’s [00:05:00] a state-based lender or a private lender, the credit criteria is typically tied to the borrower’s credit score. There may be some income requirements, and often it is also tied to the repayment option that the borrower chooses. Now, there are also private lenders out there that often have a wide range of interest rates and different types of programs.

As I mentioned with state-based lenders, their interest rates are also often tied to the strength of the borrower’s credit and the repayment option that’s chosen The interest rate is the percentage of the amount borrowed that the lender charges for the use of its money. Interest rates can come in two different varieties that you can choose from: fixed or variable.

Some lenders offer both fixed and variable rates. MEFA offers only fixed interest rates for our undergraduate and graduate loans. A fixed interest rate is [00:06:00] going to allow you to maintain a stable monthly payment for the full life of the loan so that you know the payments aren’t going to go up or down, and you know what your rate is for the life of the loan.

There’s no need to worry about how high the rate can go. Whatever your fixed interest rate is that you locked in, that will be the rate for the life of the loan. Now, variable interest rates can change with the market. They can fluctuate, could be monthly, quarterly, maybe annually, depending on the lender and how often that variable rate will change, but it can adjust with the market, which also means your rate will change, but your monthly payment will also change.

So it really depends on what the market’s doing and what your comfort level is with fixed and variable interest rates to determine which one’s gonna be the best for you. But when comparing variable interest rates, you do wanna check and see what is the cap on that interest rate? How high can that cap go?

And as I mentioned, the interest rate itself is [00:07:00] often tied to the strength of your credit. So the higher your credit score, the lower the interest rate, and it’s also going to be tied to the repayment option that you choose So when you’re looking at interest rates and comparing different loan options, you want to look at the full range of interest rates.

You don’t want to look at just the lowest advertised rate. We always say here at MEFA that the highest rate on that range is often most important than even the lowest interest rate because most borrowers aren’t going to a- be able to access that lowest interest rate unless they have a very high credit score.

So you can see with MEFA, our range of interest rates are very narrow. So our undergraduate loan, for example, ranges from 4.95% to 8.90%, and that’s tied to 10 and 15-year repayment terms. Now, other lenders may [00:08:00] charge as high as 18, even 19, 18, 19, 17%. So other lenders may have higher rates and much larger ranges of interest rates.

You can see on the screen here some of the lenders might go to a lower rate that might be tied to a shorter repayment term, such as a five or seven-year loan. So you do wanna look at the range of interest rates, but also compare the interest rates based on the repayment term. You wanna make sure you’re comparing apples to apples.

Shorter term loans often come naturally with lower interest rates

The annual percentage rate or the APR is going to include that interest rate. That’s part of the APR. It’s the annual cost of the loan. That’s gonna include any fees, such as origination fees that are tied to the loan. It’s, uh, expressed as a percentage and it’s a great quick way to compare loan options, particularly if you’re looking at fixed and [00:09:00] variable rate loans, it’s a good way to compare apples to oranges.

The repayment term is going to be the maximum repayment term that you’ll have to pay back that loan. So that’s the length of time to repay the loan. The repayment term has a direct impact on the total cost of the loan. It can provide flexibilities as families are looking at different monthly payment options based on what’s affordable for their monthly budget.

So some families may choose to defer loans if money’s tight or maybe they wanna go with the lowest interest rate and they can afford to pay the loan back while the student’s in school to access a low interest rate. It really depends on your family and your family’s monthly budget what’s gonna work best for you for a repayment term.

But luckily many lenders such as MEFA offer multiple different repayment options that you can choose from. So you can look at what’s gonna work best for your family and your budget. Now every lender, every private [00:10:00] lender is required to have an application and solicitation disclosure on their website so that potential borrowers can look at all the fine print on that loan.

It’ll provide details about the loan that you may not find highlighted on a brochure or front and center on a website. The app and solicitation disclosure, as we like to call it, includes estimated total loan costs. It’s required, as I mentioned, of private lenders such as MEFA. We are required to put a disclosure on our website, which I’ll show you in a minute, that allows borrowers to see at a loan amount of $10,000 what is the maximum interest rate that a lender can charge for that loan.

It is found on every lender’s website, so it shouldn’t be hard to find and if it is, then that should be a warning sign for you if you can’t find the lender’s disclosure statements. And it’s also required on lender comparison [00:11:00] tools such as ELMSelect, for example. Some of the things you’ll wanna look for on a lender’s disclosure statement, what are the interest rates?

What are the ranges? What are the f- hidden fees that might be tied to the loan? And most importantly, what’s gonna be the total cost of the loan if you make that payment the minimum payment for the full term of the loan? The co-borrower is going to sign the loan agreement along with the student borrower.

Keep in mind that anybody who signs a loan agreement is equally responsible for all the terms of the loan agreement. Adding an additional co-borrower, especially one with good credit and a high credit score, can help increase the chances for approval, as well as potentially get a nice lower interest rate because they have a good credit score.

So those with lower, um, interest rates often have higher credit scores. It depends on the lender, you know, what their ranges are. Um, but some lenders also may have a [00:12:00] co-borrower release option so that if a parent, for example, is co-signing with a student, and later on when the student graduates and gets out of college and has a good job, they may be able to apply to have the co-signer released and take on the loan on their own as the student borrower.

So let’s look a little bit more at some of these disclosure statements so you can get more information about how to compare loan costs. So I’ve tooki- taken some snippets of some disclosure statements. So here you can see on the left is a screenshot of part of a MEFA undergraduate loan disclosure, and on the right is a lender B, a l- loan disclosure from a different lender.

You can see that each of these disclosures show a $10,000 loan amount and the highest interest rate for each of the repayment options that each lender provides Here on the MEFA disclosure, you can see for our 15-year immediate [00:13:00] repayment loan, if you were to make the minimum loan payment at the highest interest rate for that loan, the total amount that you’d pay would be a little, little under 18,000.

So about 17,775. Now, you can prepay these loans at any time without penalty to get that total loan cost down. If you look at lender B though, you can see for that fa- same 15-year loan, because their rate is so much higher, their highest interest rate, it’s gonna cost over $30,000 for that $10,000 loan. Now, if we look at the deferred loan option with MEFA for a 15-year deferred loan, it’s gonna be a little over $21,000 for that $10,000 loan if you made minimum payments for the full term of that loan.

With lender B, with that deferred loan, as we mentioned, the more, um, you push out payments on that loan, the higher the rate might be. So you can see here with that higher rate [00:14:00] for a deferred loan, as well as not making payments while the student’s in school, that loan can cost over $56,000 because this lender B has such high interest rates And if you look at just the difference just by choosing MEFA over a different lender, and again, this is the worst case scenario at our highest interest rates, but it can save you, you know, over $12,500 for that immediate repayment loan and over $34,500 for the deferred loan.

That i- that is not a small amount of money. This is just for a $10,000 loan, so it really is important to look at the fine print and look at that full range of interest rates. Now let’s look at the disclosure of another lender’s disclosure statement, a different lender. This is not a MEFA loan, as you can tell by the high interest rates, but this is a fixed rate loan disclosure statement.

So you can see the range of interest rates can be as low as 3.2%, but can [00:15:00] also go over 18.5%. You’ll also see here any loan fees that the lender charges. MEFA does not have any fees that we charge, including late fees, but this lender doesn’t charge any origination fees, but they do charge a 5% late fee or up to $25 of that late fee.

Or they also could charge a returned check fee of up to $20. You can also see here on the right the disclosure statement will show the lender’s different repayment terms at their highest rate and the total loan cost. So I like to call that, you know, the big scary number that’s gonna show you the maximum amount you might owe.

Now, of course, we’d want you to hopefully get a lower interest rate and make, you know, larger payments or pay it off sooner to shave that total cost down, but it can be, you know, a big number to look at when you’re comparing loan options. Now let’s look at a variable rate disclosure statement. [00:16:00] This lender who, you know, is not MEFA, it’s a different lender, but you can see they are showing their range of interest rates, which is required.

So this rate can go up to 17.5%, as low as 3.775. But you’ll also notice here that the cap is listed. So it will show you as a variable rate borrower how high this variable rate could go. With this lender, it can go as high as 36%. Also, on a variable rate loan disclosure, you’ll see what the variable rate is tied to.

Is it tied to the prime rate, LIBOR? In this example, their variable interest rate is tied to the 30-day average secured overnight financing rate. So this is some of the fine print that you can see in a loan disclosure statement. Now let’s talk about some tips and strategies to borrow wisely. We always say, you know, borrow is a last resort.[00:17:00]

But you also wanna first off be aware of timing. This is important. You wanna make sure that the bills are paid on time, that spring semester bills, fall semester bills are due. Uh, fall semester bills will be due sometime in August, July, and then spring semester bills are due sometime in November or December.

The bills will do, be due about three to five weeks after the, um, bills are sent out. And the bill is only going to include direct costs such as tuition fees, and if the student’s living on campus, it will include dorm and meal plans. Private scholarships and any financial aid should be deducted from that bill.

You should see those as deductions on that bill. And if you set up a payment plan or if you’ve already applied for any loans, you may also see those as credits on your bill. Work-study, which is a form of financial aid, is not typically deducted from a bill. Work-study is something that a [00:18:00] student would apply for, a job on campus, and they would get paid every couple of weeks to help pay for unbilled expenses such as books and supplies.

So don’t deduct your work-study from your bill when you’re trying to estimate how much you owe. You can apply for a private loan, a MEFA loan, or any other private loan at least two weeks before the bill’s due date. You can apply as, as early as you like for a MEFA loan, for example, any time after April 1st for the upcoming academic year.

But we do say, you know, give yourself a two-week cushion before the bill’s due to apply in case there are any credit issues that you might run into. Uh, it is a instant credit decision. Ideally, you can get your MEFA loan done in, you know, less than an hour from front to back. Um, but give yourself a cushion of a couple weeks.

You never know what might be on a credit report. Sometimes folks freeze their credit report for, uh, fraud, for example, so you might have to get that freeze lifted in order to apply for a loan. That’s an [00:19:00] example of, you know, what might take a little bit longer in the process. You can apply for loans at any time during the academic year.

So you might say to yourself, “Well, I got the fall bill paid. We’ve saved. We’re good. But the spring semester bill, I might need some loan funds for that.” So you can apply later in the fall for your spring semester bill if you needed to, for an example. Set up any payment plans through the college based on their school schedule.

Many payment plans start in May or June, so you’ll wanna get set up on those payment plans as soon as you can Now, speaking of payment plans, it’s, payment plans are a part of MEFA’s combination strategy that we like to talk to families about to try and help minimize borrowing by using past and present income in the form of savings or payment plans before looking at future income in the form of loans.

We can help you here at MEFA to come up with a strategy that’s gonna work [00:20:00] best for you based on your individual circumstances. But here’s an example of a family who owes $20,000, and they could borrow the full 20,000 or put it on a payment plan if they wanted to. But that might be a little too steep of a payment plan amount to pay off $20,000 within 10 months at $2,000 a month.

The family might not be able to afford that, so they might be looking at using savings or loans and only putting part of the amount borrowed on a payment plan. So they could have a student, in this example, saved a little bit over the summer, so they’re gonna put a little bit of money towards the savings, uh, to help pay for that bill.

And then parents, in this example, maybe they saved about $16,000. So they’re gonna … They’ve decided they’ll do 4,000 a year out of their savings towards the bill over four years. So there we have $5,000 just using savings shaved off that bill. And this family has said, “I can afford $600 a month. That’s my affordable monthly payment.”[00:21:00]

So they can’t put it all on the payment plan, but they’ve decided we can put $500 a month on a 10-month, $5,000 payment plan. And then we can put the rest on a loan at about $100 a month for that $10,000 loan. So there’s our $600 affordable payment, $500 from the payment plan, 100 on the loan. And you can see that, you know, we still needed to borrow.

In this example, they borrowed $10,000, but they shaved their bill in half before even looking at a loan, and that’s really the best strategy is to look at other options before looking at loan borrowing You’ll always want to look at the Federal Direct Student Loans before looking at any other private or cosign loans or even a Parent PLUS Loan.

They tend to have better rates and borrower benefits than, you know, other private loans. It’s really the only way that a student, particularly an undergraduate student, can take out a loan [00:22:00] on their own without lim- without credit or limited credit and, you know, not pay it back for four years because they need to defer the loan.

It’s hard for an undergraduate student to get a loan on their own. So they often need a cosigner. However, with the Federal Direct Student Loans, they can take this loan out with their … without cosigners on their own. They are the only borrower on this loan. You can see that there are annual loan limits.

For example, a freshman can borrow up to $5,500. There is no credit check. The only issue is if a student has defaulted on a prior education loan, they would need to get that loan out of default before taking out a Federal Direct Loan The interest rate is updated annually. You can see the ’26, ’27 rate has been announced.

That will be into effect on July 1st of 2026, and it will be 6.52% fixed. On the subsidized portion [00:23:00] of the loan, if you do have a subsidized federal direct loan, meaning interest is not gonna accrue while the student is in school, you don’t have to make payments on that, but the unsubsidized portion of the loan will accrue interest immediately upon disbursement.

Now, students don’t have to make payments of principal and interest, but they can make voluntary payments on that unsubsidized loan interest that is accruing while they’re in school. There is a small fee deducted from federal direct student loans of 1.057%, so keep that in mind that that will be deducted from the loan amount, so the full 5,500 freshman loan will not be credited to the bill.

The amount credited to the student’s billing account at the college will be $5,441.87 to be exact. Students will need to sign a master promissory note online and go through entrance counseling at studentaid.gov to ensure that they understand their rights and [00:24:00] responsibilities as a federal student loan borrower.

And when they graduate, they will also go through exit counseling to make sure they understand that there’s multiple re- multiple repayment options for them to choose from. As they go on in their academic career, they can borrow more on this loan. The loan amounts go up, and they go up even higher for graduate students So the next step is to carefully think about that loan amount.

How much do you need to borrow? So the maximum you can borrow in a private loan or a PLUS loan, um, really on the private loans the PLUS loan is going to have a maximum loan amount of $20,000. But on a MEFA loan for example, the maximum loan amount is going to be the cost of attendance minus your financial aid.

We don’t have a maximum loan amount beyond that at MEFA and there are no aggregate loan lim- limits on the MEFA loan. So on- but only borrow what you need. Just because you can borrow the full cost of attendance doesn’t mean that you should. Try and [00:25:00] use savings payment plans to shave down that cost before borrowing.

Estimate your total loan payment just for the first year. You’ll know what that payment will be. But you’ll also want to project out four years if you need to borrow each year. So if you’re borrowing the first year just multiply that payment by four just to estimate what you’ll be paying after borrowing for each year for all four years.

Make sure that you can afford the last year of college as much as you can afford borrowing for the first year of college. Consider the co-borrower and the student’s projected salaries, uh, when determining maximum loan amounts and estimated monthly payments. What’s going to be affordable? We definitely recommend borrow for the full academic year.

You can always reduce the loan, change up the disbursement amounts, dates, whatever you need to do with the college. There is flexibility there and it’s much easier to borrow for the full [00:26:00] year and reduce the loan than to have to borrow again a few months later or borrowing each semester because that will show up on your credit each time you apply for a new loan.

So it is easier to just borrow for the full year and make adjustments down as needed. Now after you’ve applied and the school has certified the loan and set up the disbursement dates, those loan funds will go directly to the college

If you’re borrowing loan funds for unre- for off-campus housing, for example, you can borrow a MEFA loan. We’ll send the money to the college, and then the college will give you a refund for those unbilled expenses. So let’s talk a little bit more detail about MEFA loans specifically. Our rates for this current year have been set, and we are pleased with rates of 4.95% to 8.90% APR, depending on the repayment option [00:27:00] that you choose.

The payments are going to be fixed because we have fixed rate loans, and there are multiple payment options to choose from, such as immediate repayment, interest only, and deferred. There are no origination or application fees, as I mentioned earlier, on the MEFA loan. And we do offer an instant credit decision once you complete your application.

So you can see the QR code here if you do need to apply. You can just scan that and go right to our online application

So we talked earlier about some of the resources that MEFA has, and one of the great resources on our website when planning on trying to strategize how much to borrow is MEFA’s student loan payment calculator. You can scan this QR code, but I will just quickly demonstrate the calculator for you so you can see how it works [00:28:00] So first you’ll just wanna put in the amount that you’re looking to borrow.

So we’ll just use our example of $20,000. And it’s a freshman, so we’ll put four years before graduation. And then we’ll use the middle range here for credit as very good. That’s usually a good safe bet right in the middle there if you’re trying to figure, figure out the calculations just to estimate. And you can see for that $20,000 loan, it shows you what the monthly payments will be in school while the student’s in school and after they graduate for each of our five repayment options, the total cost of the loan, which I mentioned on those loan disclosure statements, as well as the interest rate that’s tied to each repayment option and the APRs.

So this is a good tool to use if you want to, you know, run the numbers. We’re looking at $20,000 here. Uh, but if we wanted to, we could shave $5,000 off and rerun the numbers for 15,000, and this is an activity I do with parents all the time [00:29:00] just to show them how much lower the payment can go just by taking off a few thousand and how much lower that total cost of the loan can be as well

We always get asked often how does the MEFA loan compare to the Federal Parent PLUS Loan? So first off, our rates are much lower, as you can see, ranging from 4.95 to 8.90. The direct PLUS loan for the upcoming year is going to be 9.07% fixed. The APR for federal loans is not disclosed. They also do not provide disclosure statements that are required of private lenders.

You can see, as I mentioned, there’s no fees on the MEFA loan, but the PLUS loan does charge y- charge over a 4% origination fee, which can, can add up if you’re borrowing, you know, more than 10, $20,000. It’s not a small origination fee. And that is gonna be deducted from the loan. [00:30:00] So with the MEFA loan, the student is on the loan.

However, with the direct PLUS loan, it has to be the parent that borrows. It cannot be any credit-worthy cosigner, which it, it can be for MEFA. It doesn’t have to be a parent. And there is a shared responsibility with that MEFA loan, whereas with the direct PLUS loan, it’s 100% in the parent’s name. With the MEFA loan, you can borrow, as I mentioned, the full cost of attendance minus financial aid.

And except for with the PLUS loan, unfortunately, there’s gonna be caps on that loan next year, so you can only borrow up to $20,000 a year and only $65,000 total for each student. So if you need to borrow more than $20,000 a year, the PLUS loan is not gonna get you there. You wanna look at other loan options, and we recommend starting with one o- loan option when you, you know, are applying that you’re gonna use for all four years, ’cause it’s easier to stick with one lender.

But of course, you do wanna shop around, make sure you’re taking [00:31:00] out the program that’s gonna work best for you. So you can’t transfer responsibilities of the PLUS loan, but you can with MEFA ’cause the student is on that loan. There’s minimum credit standards for each program. The MEFA loan has an immediate repayment term of 10 years, 15 years.

You can also do interest only for 15 years, and we have two deferred options that are 15-year repayment terms. The standard Federal PLUS Loan is gonna start at 10 years, but you can extend that based on the amount you’re borrowing. If you wanted to, you can defer that program as well. Students do need to be enrolled at least half-time for each loan, and there are safeguards, God forbid, in the case of student death or disability in the MEFA loan and parent s- or student death or disability for the PLUS loan.

You do not need to file a FAFSA to take out a MEFA loan. You do need to file a FAFSA to borrow a PLUS loan. However, MEFA recommends file that FAFSA [00:32:00] anyway and see what you might be able to access in federal and state aid, as well as aid from the college before you consider borrowing So let’s compare the cost differences with the MEFA loan and the PLUS loan.

So if we use the total amount borrowed of $20,000, you can see that, you know, the origination fee alone is over $800 with the PLUS loan, whereas there’s no origination fee with MEFA. The rate you can see is much higher. Now, I didn’t, we didn’t use the lowest interest rate with MEFA of 4.95% for this comparison.

We used a five-year weighted FICO, uh, for our MEFA immediate repayment 10-year loan. So the rate of 6.6% is that weighted average. You can see the monthly payments are also lower on the MEFA loan because that rate’s so much lower and there are no fees. So if we look at the total cost just by using a MEFA loan over a PLUS loan, we’re saving over [00:33:00] $4,400 just by using the MEFA loan Now, in addition to the rate and loan limits that we mentioned that are gonna come into play on 7/1/2026, I mentioned the $20,000 cap per student, $65,000 aggregate limit per student.

So that’s gonna come into play. There is a couple of small exceptions to this. If the borrower has met these criteria, for example, if the student is continuing the same program in the same school and the student borrowed a Direct Loan or the parent borrowed a PLUS Loan prior to July 1, 2026, so this would have had to have been for this academic year or before, then they can borrow at the higher loan limits for up to three years or the remainder of the pro- student’s program, whichever is shorter.[00:34:00]

Now, if the s- parent is borrowing a new loan after July 1st, 2026, they will be required to go with the new limits of $20,000 annually and $65,000 total. In addition, they will not have access to all the repayment programs that are out there now. Those are going to, um, go away, some of them. So the only repayment option that will be available is going to be the new tiered standard plan for PLUS Loans.

And that is also the case even for borrowers that applied and had a loan before July 1st. There will also no longer be public service loan forgiveness, um, and income-based repayment on PLUS Loans, even if the previous PLUS Loans have made payments towards, uh, achieving public service loan forgiveness. So these are things that you’ll want to consider if you are looking at the PLUS [00:35:00] Loan.

We’d be happy to chat with you at MEFA about these differences, uh, because timing and if you are a borrower who’s looking at public service loan forgiveness, you do wanna, you know, be strategic about what you’re using and, and when you’re applying. So feel free to give us a call if you need help trying to navigate these changes.

MEFA is your trusted resource. We help families all the time. I’ve helped many families, one-on-one appointments, phone calls, and emails. You can request a virtual one-on-one appointment. We can do a Zoom call with you. Uh, listen to our podcast. We have great guests that we have on our podcast. If you like a podcast, subscribe to ours.

And definitely, you know, scan the QR code to find more information about MEFA’s resources. Our email curriculum is great. And as I showed you earlier, we have calculators and, and webinars that are free and available online 24/7 Connect with us at MEFA on social, whatever [00:36:00] social media channels you’re using, our podcasts, our YouTube channel has all of our videos.

So definitely connect with us. We’re often sharing lots of great, uh, programs and events that can help you through this process, scholarship alerts, all kinds of great information for students and families we share through our social channels as well. Here’s our 800 number and our email if you need help throughout this process.

We are here 9:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday, Eastern Time. Give us a call. We can help you. We can answer any of your questions, not just about MEFA loans, but just about paying for college in general. So don’t be afraid to reach out if you need help. We are looking forward to hearing from you and chatting with you and helping you, uh, with your goals towards achieving a college education.

So thank you for listening, and we hope to hear from you soon