According to BusinessWeek, Chicago Booth, Northwestern University, Rochester’s Simon School, and UCLA Anderson are among the six universities and 15 graduate programs that have joined the Affiliated Loan Program for Students (ALPS), a solution to the international student loan crisis. In 2008, just as admissions season was approaching, a few major international student loan lenders (like Sallie Mae and CitiAssist loan programs) disappeared, leaving future international b-school students financially stranded.
US universities can join ALPS, a program funded by the Deutsche Bank (DB) in order to help their international students acquire adequate funding without the domestic co-signer that most other lending programs require. Other student benefits: International students do not need to establish credit, interest rates are below 10%, and according to one international student, there’s very little paperwork.
Participating schools also benefit from adopting the loan program: The program boosts a school’s credit rating, there are no up-front expenses, and the school doesn’t need to worry about setting limits on loan volume.
For schools like Rochester’s Simon School, BusinessWeek describes the ALPS program as a “lifeline.” About half of Simon’s students are international; one-third of the international students have already signed up for the ALPS no-co-signer loans.
Medical schools, law schools, and more b-schools are expected to follow the example of these few ALPS-active b-schools and join ALPS in the coming year.
There are some b-schools (including HBS, Stanford, Wharton, and MIT Sloan) that are not joining the ALPS program, but that are joining other no-co-signer loan programs with credit unions.
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