SoFi Blog

We’ve gotten a lot of attention on the back of our $77 million B-round. Most of this attention has been positive, but there are still a few cynics out there. Notably, some people have asked, “OK – you lower loan rates – but how are you actually disrupting this market and solving the student debt problem?” Fair point, especially given how crappy student loan solutions have been to date – both from the government and private lenders.

Student loans aren’t fun, and they can be confusing. What frustrates us at SoFi is the dogma in the market that students should always exhaust their federal loan options before considering private loans. This can be very bad advice. While we agree that subsidized Direct and Perkins loans are clear no-brainers for students if you are eligible for them, things get more ambiguous with unsubsidized Direct loans and become down right murky with the egregiously burdensome Grad PLUS loan.

Just last week, we expanded our SoFi ReFi program to more schools across the country, and the response has been huge.  But we’ve been also hearing from a lot students and parents who are looking for better loan options to pay for the upcoming school year. For so many people who don’t qualify for subsidized federal loans, 6.8% is the best rate they’ve been able to find until now. And often, families needing to borrow beyond the Stafford limits have been looking at 7.9% or higher for a substantial portion of their loans.

SoFi ReFi Program Is Now Available at 27 Schools 

In May we introduced the first phase of SoFi ReFi, our graduate loan refinancing program, to five schools: the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School, MIT’s Sloan School of Business, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Business and worked closely with the alumni community at these schools to get the program up and running. The first few months have gone well and we’ve had a great response from both students and alumni to the program.

The more you learn about the student loan market, the more you realize how broken the system really is. There are horror stories about companies suing parents whose children have died before repaying their student loans. Others tell tales of loan companies being totally inflexible and demanding full payment even when a borrower has hit a temporary rough patch.