Most loans are not rocket science. There are of course exceptions, such as the swaption currency based corporate loan but I digress, you just have to be willing to read the documents and learn a bit about how loans and lenders work.  In fact this is a key to see how your credit history is useful as well.  Yes, just like you gamed your classes in high school to get better grades ala Ferris Beuller you can also game the credit companies once you are armed with some knowledge.

So in order to find the cheapest student loans you have a few options. This article will discuss those options and I'll try to help you to choose the options that are the best for you.

Subsidized Stafford loans are definitely the cheapest of the student loans because the federal government pays for the loans while you're in school. It's hard to beat that. This means that you don't start paying interest until after you're done with school. You can take a look at your interest rate at that point to determine whether it's competitive or not and if it's not, you can consider refinancing the Stafford loan. Not paying interest for four years or more in the case of grad school is really hard to beat and that's why Stafford loans get my #1 prize for being the cheapest loans for students.

Perkins loans are also extremely cheap but can only be taken out by people who have a lot of need. If you have any family money at all you can basically forget being able to get Perkins loans. However, if you can get them they can really help you out because they are designed specifically for you.

In order to get private loans that are cheap you will need to find out what your credit score looks like and what you can do to make it look better.  If for example your parents have bad credit your score might be tainted as a result.  Call the credit companies and get that fixed.  If you have a close friend or relative with great credit and they are willing to put you on one of their cards you can sometimes add 50 points or more onto your score.

If you can make a big purchase and pay it off quickly that will also help your score as it shows you are a good borrower.  Things like this are small but can really add up over time to provide cheaper student loans.  Another option that can not go unchecked is to see if you can qualify for any grants.  As opposed to loans you don’t have to repay grants, which obviously is nice as it lowers your overall funding costs and therefore your debt levels.

As you can see there are a lot of things that go into your loan costs and interest rates.  By learning and becoming more educated at an early age as to how the credit scoring system works you can be miles ahead of your classmates and even your parents when it comes time to finance a home, small business, or even just a vacation.  With a high enough credit score funding becomes very inexpensive and relatively easy to get.

So to get the cheapest student loan make sure that you have good credit, that you have no outstanding debt, that you have a job, and make sure that you go after a major that will enable you to pay off the debt after you graduate.  If you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and you want to be a social worker you will have a hard time paying it all off.  If you instead want to go be an investment banker things will be a lot eaiser.

If you can use the loans I've mentioned above, DO IT. They are the cheapest student loans out there. If you can't, you might have to look at some other options for financing your education. To do that I would like to see you learn as much as you possibly can about finance and financial topics. Here are some articles that I've put together for students:

Pell grant requirements - why get loans when you can get grants?

Help paying off student loans - if you are way over your head in student loan debt, this article is for you.

Student loans for off campus housing - yes, you can get student loans even if you aren't going to live on campus.

Loan forgiveness - there are a lot of programs out there that make it so that you don't have to pay back your student loans.

Low interest personal loans - Once I needed a small loan just to put gas in my car to drive home from college. I KNOW that you sometimes find yourselves in similar situations. Being a student on a tight budget is sometimes hard. Since I had crap credit and you might too, take a look also at no credit check personal loans.