You either need a loan or you need to refinance your current debt. First of all you need to decide how much money you'll need, which loan type is best for you; you'll also need to decide whether this is the right time to do it and how you are going to pay for it. All these questions need to be answered prior to applying for a student loan or refinance student loan and even before doing some research and requesting loan quotes.

Loan Amount

The amount of money you will need does not only have to cover tuition, studying material, and any other college related costs, but also accommodation, transportation and other expenses that you will have to face due to living away from home. Once you've added up all your expenses, it is a good idea to add a 15% over that amount for unexpected expenses that always arise.

Loan Types

For starters, we will analyze government student loans. Federal Loans carry, as regular loans, capital and interests. Though the interest rate charged is lower than private loans, so is the loan amount. Under certain circumstances the interest can be subsidized and not charged. Otherwise the interest, though present, is deferred till after graduation. Moreover, the capital can also be deferred till after graduation and sometimes you can get a government grant so you won't have to reimburse the money at all.

Private student loans, on the other hand, have higher interest rates but you can request higher loan amounts. There are mainly two types of private student loans: Secured Student Loans and Unsecured Student Loans. Generally, secured student loans are requested by parents who have a property to use as collateral in order to pay for their sons/daughters' tuition. Unsecured Student Loans are generally requested by student themselves and do not require collateral in order to be approved.

Refinancing or Consolidating your Student Debt

If you can't meet your monthly payments or you want to take advantage of better market conditions you may want to refinance your student loans. By refinancing you'll take a loan in order to cancel previous debt. When a single loan is used to repay more than one loan or other debt, the process is known as consolidating. There are loans specially tailored for this purpose: Consolidation Loans. And there are even loans of this kind designed to consolidate only student debt.

By refinancing or consolidating student debt you can save thousands of dollars on interests. Moreover, by consolidating you'll get a single monthly payment instead of several bills. However, bear in mind that refinancing makes sense only if you can save money by doing so or at least reduce your monthly payments so you can afford them without sacrifices.