I would not recommend Sallie Mae as a lender to any student!!!! I had to get a alternative loan to complete my bachelor's through Sallie Mae. Now that I'm in grad school they informed me that I have to start repayment of the alternative loans immediately. I was first told by one of their customer service reps that I could defer the repayment until I graduate in 2012. There are too many people telling a person different things. They will contact you repeatedly during the day, approximately five times. Each time, you're told a different story from the last.

1 is to high for this company. Today I received a email from SM stating that my loan was denied, but on the OpenNet site I was approved. I start college next week!! My college has today me that everything was good and all that was left was to show up and start school. Of course SM had to send me the email the day my whole family is holding a going away party and a weekend so that I have a week to get all this mess together. It's taken a lot of time and money to get into my college and there just ****-in with me now. Lets see what happens Monday when I call them and find out whats going on.

My opinion of Sallie Mae is neutral. I don't hate them, and I certainly don't love them!

Prior to consolidating my subsidized and unsub'ed they held five of my seven individual student loans. Six years ago my loans with SLM and other lenders went 120 days past due. Can't imagine what the HECK I was thinking back then. I was depressed and ignoring all of my bills because I couldn't pay.

Anyway, I finally contacted SLM and they cheerfully agreed to bring all my loans current if I agreed to consolidate with them. All the additional late fees and whatever else they charged were rolled into my big fat balance of around $50,000. I guess that was nice of them. Afterall they're making $$ on that big balance of mine.

I've NEVER encountered rude or discourteous customer service reps when I've called. Actually for the most part I would say they're kinda nice. People who complain about rude phone reps are probably in default and dealing with a collection agency that SLM has contracted.

On a less positive note I can confirm any wonders if they report late payments to credit reporting agencies. They do! I'm still living with five blemishes that they reported as 120 days past due. How else would I have known that I was once that behind on my payments! huh!

Their website makes it convenient for paying. I'm on a level payment plan that runs 30 frickin' years! If I continue to pay level in that time frame I will have paid around $120,000 total! Yes folks...interest adds up!

I've put together a plan and hope to pay off my balance in four years time. I'm sick n tired of padding the pockets of SLM!

Special note...if you plan on paying extra in addition to your monthly payment it MUST be sent in the mail seperate from your regular payment! And a special note "please apply to principle" MUST be noted! I found this in the fine print at the website.

People...PLEASE understand what you're getting into BEFORE taking out student loans! If I could do it all over I would've NEVER taken out loans. I would've gone to community college and studied for a technical degree. Nursing? X-ray tech? Computers? Something that is guaranteed to give me a job that pays a decent wage. Instead I'm stuck with a liberal arts type degree and working a job that requires minimal skill and only a high school diploma. Blaah! And I have no one to blame except MYSELF!

READ THE FINE PRINT!

Sallie Mae has been horrible in working with us to pay back our loan. They started out with a payment of only $10 per month, then jacked it up to $180 per month after one year. If you get behind, they'll promise to renegotiate to a lower payment plan if you catch up, but when you catch up and call to work on it, they hang up on you. They'll call up to 5 times a day at home and will call at work even when you tell them to stop calling. They are rude and ruthless. Do NOT take out a loan from this company.

Sallie Mae is bar none the worst run business (financial institution or otherwise) with which I have ever dealt. Financial institutions should have some degree of record-keeping. I would expect, for example, Sallie Mae to know what loans they have issued me, whether any of these have (accidentally) been placed in default, the universities at which I have studied with the money they have leant me, etc. Even when speaking with professionals working at main branches in the US, one is dumbfounded by the abysmal record-keeping, the carelessness with which accounts are administered, and the general lack of knowledge about any non-standard sorts of higher education with which their company nevertheless has to deal. This company is an absolute disservice to students.

In my own personal experience with Sallie Mae I have been applaud by the business practices, and ethics that the company has and issues out to all its clients and future borrowers. The purpose of getting a higher education for yourself is to better yourself, not to find yourself, (like so many countless others that have dealings with Sallie Mae and those like them), to be further in debt than you originally started out with by a flood of ludicrous amounts of unjustified fees. I have found by reviewing and reading many news articles, testimonials, personal horror stories of Sallie Mae’s practices that the business of deeping their pockets is more important than seeing students reach a better way of life or accomplishing their dreams, and to be able reasonably to payback their loans. I agree that we need a system that helps students to find finical means to able to further their education, although the system we currently have is one of false promises, and pilfered dreams, taken from the very people that will suffer for these transgressions along with their children’s children as long as the tax payers are forced by the US Board of Education to supply Sallie Mae with amazing 98% coverage when borrowers are unable to pay or are forced to default in their loans due to economic hardships. For Sallie Mae and those like them it is a win/win situation, for us, it’s a tragedy.

I would highly recommend to anyone that they take the time to type in Students against Sallie Mae within Google’s search engine, ( which calculates alone 1,960,000 results), and see for themselves how Sallie Mae views you as the borrower, and how we have allowed them to take away all of our consumer protection rights so the CEOs of SLM like the former one, can afford to build his own private golf course, while the rest of us hard working students and former, suffer through monstrous interest rates and are charged unknown/late fees that alone in the past years has been racked up to 178 billion dollars to their supposed satisfied clients.

I as a student personally prefer Sallie Mae over many other student lending companies because they offer subsidized and unsubsidized as well as private based loans. They helped pay for my education at both the University Level as well as the Private Art-School in which I attended. I've never encountered a problem in the way they conduct business. It's just beautiful.

I wish you could rate lower than a 1. If you could I would give SLM a -100! They have the worst interest rates for private student loans out of everybody. My school recommended them to me and I should have shopped around, but I was young and didn't know any better. I'm sure paying for that now. They have the worst customer service I've ever experienced in my life. I sat on hold for at least 20 minutes then I got transferred across the entire company because nobody would answer my question. THEN the a "Supervisor" hung up on me when all I wanted to know was why they lied to me about approving a deferment when they really didn't approve anything. They have cost me alot of money and as soon as I can I'm going to take my loans somewhere else. DON'T under any circumstances give this company any of your money, they don't deserve it at all. Their website is horrible, you can't even make extra payments on the principal, you have to call them and explain to them that you want to pay on the loan principal or else they will just tack it on to the interest, and i don't have the time to spend an hour and a half on the phone just to make a principal payment. Horrible horrible horrible. STAY AWAY!!!

I actually took out these student loans to pay for the parent loans my parents took out in their names while I was going to graduate school (as it's hard to pay for both current and past schooling at once). Anyway, I do really like that they linked up with UPromise to decrease the loan amount and that they are great with their internet capabilities. The user interface on their website is really great and it makes it easy to understand. However, I'm stopping paying for the parent loans with their loans because their percentage rate is like 6.5% and the parent fed rate is only 5.25%; however, I would definately recommend them to anyone.

Sallie Mae made it easy to finance my education. They made it easy to defer my loans when I was looking for a great job after graduation. There website is easy to navigate and they send me clear statements regularly.