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.

I will never get another student loan through this company again. The find every way to milk every cent they can out of you. The interest rate seemed fair at the time (8%), but once I started paying on it, I found the real cost. I was making extra payments just to see my balance go up every month. Turns out my extra principle payments were going to interest - I wasn't allowed to pay extra principle until AFTER I had paid back something like $5,000 in interest.
I ran off and got a low interest credit card to pay it off.
Their model is a sham, no wonder they are bleeding to death

I had a very good experience with Sallie Mae. The provided me with a loan for the amount I needed for college. Not too much, so that I would have high interest, but enough that I could pay for all my expenses. I think that the interest was fair. I would suggest paying them off as soon as possible to avoid paying too much in the long run. This is what I did and it boosted my credit report significantly. I would recommend checking them out.

The Salliemae website is easy to navigate, though they've made security very tough. I had to fill out many, many security questions and I find that I sometimes forget what I wrote!

They give you a choice of receiving paper or email statements, and are consistent about getting them out on time.

I like that I can always see what the outstanding principal is, and what my 16-day payoff amount would be.

I do wish they had better options for setting up email reminders for upcoming bills. There is nothing worse than missing a payment and getting hit with a late fee, so some additional email reminder options would really help.