By Kari Johnson on Febrtuary 10, 2011
.jpg.aspx?width=75&height=75) Most people believe college is an investment in the future, but it is an expensive one. While loans are an option from the start, there are some instances where your financial situation can change abruptly. If this happens and you need money for school, you may need emergency student loans.
All emergency student loan terms are going to differ slightly by institution, since these are handled by the individual universities. You get them during the semester, on a rolling, first-come, first-serve basis. Unfortunately, this means that you may have a problem getting them during one semester if you do not need them until later. This is because all of the money the school is going to use for their emergency student loans have already been designated for that purpose and will not be renewed or increased until the next semester.
There are some benefits to these loans that you do not see with normal student loans. As the “emergency” might suggest, they are treated as fairly urgent and therefore have a quicker turnaround than most student loans, sometimes between two and fourteen days. Plus, there are no interest charges.
That is, if you qualify. And there is no such thing as free money: you may have to pay a fee to use the service, and pay other fees if you are late paying the loan back, besides the hold they could put on your student account.
And the time period is a short one. While it will vary from school to school, the general time period is can be between thirty and sixty days. The time is almost always before the end of the semester. Besides, the money cannot be used to pay for tuition for two reasons: it is always given after the semester has already started, even if you applied for it beforehand, and there is usually a cap on the amount of money a student can borrow, generally at less than a thousand.
Considering the loan is so short-term, as well as small, there are probably better, more foolproof ways to get the money you need than emergency student loans. You got to this point: you’re smart enough to figure out the rest, right? |