TuitionBids.com in the News
Press Releases
3/24/2008
TuitionBids.com Featured on KiwiBox.com
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BY: Blair E., Senior Editor POSTED: 3/24/2008
It is ironic that the process leading into to the best four years of your life is one of the most daunting, stressful and confusing procedures you will undoubtedly ever encounter. While the hours it takes to complete college applications, and the panic attacks this brings along with it, may be fleeting once that acceptance letter arrives, some of the decisions made during this time can have long-term ramifications that many students may not realize until they graduate! With major issues such as loans thrown into the mix, it is enough to make your head spin-- you might as well be reading gibberish when it comes to documents that try to simplify the world of money, loans and lenders.
If you get an offer should you take it? Do you wait? Do you even qualify? There are so many questions and equally as many conflicting opinions that sometimes a guidance counselor just won’t cut it. Forget about paying over a hundred dollars to consult with outside “professional” help and Mom and Dad are totally biased, what do you do?
Too often even websites do not even provide relief from this complex matrix of facts and figures; however with the launch of Tuitionbids.com the world of college financing has finally been consolidated and this hair-pulling process has just gotten a whole lot easier.
It all started a year and half ago when something inside Keith Alliots head just clicked.
Reviewing credit reports for years while he worked in the real estate business, he realized something strange. All too many times he was seeing the same thing—prominent men and women well into their 30s and even 40s, some doctors, some lawyers, all living an economically sound lifestyle, still paying off their student loan debts. While it takes most couples only seven years to compensate for their residential mortgages, most students hold onto their student loan debts for 19 years or more!
“That is what led me to start looking into this space further to see if there was an opportunity to help the student and these borrowers first get better educated on this process, so they can make a more informed professional decision,” Keith explained. “At the same time, [I wanted] to try and do whatever we can to make the environment [also] more competitive so their loans become more affordable.”
That is when Keith, who had never applied for a student loan before, started doing his own academic experiment. He began to apply for student loans himself to better understand what this process really entailed. Even for a grown man working in his own business, a good amount of years out of his own senior year of high school, this process proved to be just as overwhelming and frustrating. If obtaining loans was this confusing for him, he didn’t understand how any just-eager-to-get-to-college 18-year-old could make a good decision for his or her future without this vital knowledge and know-how.
“I thought to myself, why can’t I create a situation where multiple lenders would have to earn this [the student’s] business and bid for the customer’s [to take their loans] without it being expected.”
And then the ideas just kept flowing…
This business model of creating a site as a “one stop destination for students and parents to come to” came soon after. From what he had learned, Keith fashioned a website in which students could come to for all their financial questions. This author, who barely knew what a private or federal loan was, came out an expert after reading the various simplified informational paragraphs and frequently asked questions.
In addition to these easy-to-read and mind you shorter pages of instructive text that eliminate lengthy unnecessary info, Keith had added a few other helpful instruments such as a “gap calculator” which computes how much you would need to obtain from the lenders based on your own financial input and any scholarships or grants you may be provided with and the “CampusDetective” which provides not only financial information on your desired college, but also other helpful facts such as student population, majors offered and other little points that save you a trip to 800 individual school sites. The website even comes complete with a little glossary acting as a pocket dictionary online to the loan world, although you probably won’t need it once you have navigated through the easy-to-use site.
The best and most stand-out feature though by far is Keith’s unique bidding design.
Never before could a student simply fill out a very simple application, submit it and within 24 hours, 48 if you do it on a weekend or holiday, hear back from up to six bidders vying for you to choose their offers!
This design makes it possible for students to compare and contrast multiple loans instead of just accepting their first offer, which is a mistake Keith notes happens all to often.
“In a lot of cases, a very high percentage [of students] take the first deal that they get offered,” he says. “It is not until after they graduate that they realize how costly they are and maybe that they should have done more research. At this point it is too late.”
However, with Tuitionbids.com, a student never needs to worry about regret. Keith makes sure to enlist only the most reliable of lenders and the most secure of website designs to protect not only your personal information, but your financial future as well.
He notes it is never too early to start poking around and checking out your top choices. The site also comes in handy once you have actually been accepted and continues to help out even as you apply for different loans in your college years.
Keith makes it possible to obtain the most cost-effective loan you can. In the future, the site hopes to add more lenders, partners and additional information to their audience. As Keith highlights,
“Without knowledge or education, it is impossible to make better decisions.”
