FAP427: Your credit may deny you a job and how to fix it, private student loan news, movie scholarship, Slackstring
Student Financial Aid News
+ From BankNet360: College graduates who don’t pay off their student loans may be in more trouble than they realize. Many employers are now using credit checks to help choose job applicants.
+ Banking, information technology, and accounting companies, in addition to many government agencies, and police and fire departments are the most likely to do so. It is a new trend that became more common after the Sept. 11 attacks.
+ Weak job markets are partly to blame for the trend, giving employers room to be pickier, believing a person’s credit history can sometimes give a clue to their stability.
+ MyRichUncle, a brand of student loans issued by New York-based MRU Holdings Inc., today announced it will help some college students get home for the holidays on Dec. 21.
+ The company will reimburse students for the $15, one-way fare on the Fung Wah “Chinatown Bus� from Boston to New York, where college students are the majority of passengers.
+ To receive the gift, at the terminal students must provide a MyRichUncle representative with their pre-purchased bus ticket, student ID, and email address.
+ MyRichUncle powers our Graduate Student Loans at GradLoans.com
+ From NASFAA: “Concerned about the deals that some lenders have struck with financial-aid administrators to win student-loan business, U.S. Education Department officials are considering barring colleges from recommending fewer than three lenders to students who are seeking federal loans,” reports The Chronicle of Higher Education. “Speaking on Wednesday before a committee that will recommend changes in federal student-aid rules, department officials said they were concerned that some colleges had violated the law by forcing students to borrow from lenders with which the institutions have exclusive arrangements.”
+ From Inside Higher Ed: A report, The Future of Private Loans: Who Is Borrowing, and Why?, issued by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, found that the vast majority (83 percent) of students with private student loans are undergraduates, while 9 percent are graduate students and 7 percent professional students. Yet professional students, proportionally, are much likelier than undergraduate or graduate students to take out private loans: 24 percent of professional students had private loans in 2003-4, compared to 5 percent of both undergraduate and graduate students.
+ In addition, nearly 80 percent of undergraduates who borrow privately also hold federal Stafford loans, lending credence to the notion that many people turn to private loans mainly because their rising college costs and borrowing needs exceed the U.S. government’s limits on federal loan amounts.
+ Well, duh!
Scholarship Update
+ Warner Bros. Pictures is giving fans the opportunity to win a $50,000 scholarship by entering a We Are Marshall fan page contest. The contest encourages entrants to create the most impressive and creative film fan page on favorite social networking sites, such as MySpace, AIM Pages, Friendster, Live Journal, MSN Spaces, Tagged, Xanga, Yahoo 360, Facebook or their personal web page.
+ The director, McG, will choose the winning page. Warner Bros. will showcase some of the top entries on the film’s official website.
+ Fans can download a We Are Marshall materials tool kit to aid with the construction of their pages. The tool kit will include stills, logos, and trailers, among other content. The page that displays the most spirit will win the $50,000 Scholarship award. Judging will be based on content, creativity, originality and use of materials. Sites must be kept live throughout the duration of the contest, ending on the film’s opening day, December 22, 2006.
+ Deadline December 22, 2006
+ Details at our free scholarship web site, Student Scholarship Search
Financial Hacks
+ Understanding incentivized systems
+ Credit bureaus
+ Credit is a system incentivizing banks
+ The worse your credit is, the more money they make
+ Credit bureaus have no incentive to accurately report your credit
+ For more credit tips, check out our student credit and credit card site, Student Platinum.
+ Get consistent credit reports through the year
+ Every 4 months from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion
+ Call the toll free number instead of using the web site
+ 877-322-8228
+ Use the mail in PDF in today’s show notes
Podsafe Music
+ Slackstring, Lay Back Live
+ Music via the Podsafe Music Network
+ Stop by our MySpace page!
Reminders
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA form online filing at FAFSAonline.com
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.
Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 877-328-1565 x529 or 206-350-1208. AIM: FinAidPodcast Add me to your iTunes by visiting http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com/itunes/
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Doesn’t checking someone’s credit rating before you hire them seem unethical? Are there laws against that or is that just public knowledge?
December 18th, 2006 | #
It is legal as long as you consent to it. In the pile of paperwork for the job application, there’s usually a credit investigation form.
Obviously, not authorizing it is considered a red flag by the employer - they may not reject you explicitly because of that, but it’ll be part of the rejection.
December 18th, 2006 | #