Loan consolidation essentially combines a number of your loans into one big loan, which has a lower interest rate and thus leads to lower overall monthly payments on your loans. A loan consolidated by LendingTree can lower your monthly payment by over 50% in the first year. Although consolidating student loans can also increase the period over which you can repay your loan, we recommend that you continue paying the same payment as you were paying before. This way you can reduce the principal and pay off the loan faster.

We recommend that anyone with student loans fill out an application with studentloannetwork.com. There is no fee to apply; and if you are approved, a loan consolidation will allow you to reduce your payments, simplify the hassle tracking of several different loans, and could possibly allow you to get out of debt faster.

The LendingTree application is very quick and simple to fill out. In most cases, you will receive notice on your approval within minutes. In order to get approved for a loan consolidation, you must have evidence of two years of work history, two years of credit history, be a U.S. citizen and meet minimum credit criteria. If you don´t meet any of these criteria or if your credit rating is below 700 we recommend that you have a parent or other creditworthy person co-sign your application. Your loan will be based on their credit; and this could translate into a lower monthly payment.