2019 Best-Of Student Loans
We believe you deserve the best. That's why we spent countless hours researching and comparing to bring you this year’s best student loan lenders, some of which are from our partners. We considered multiple categories, like repayment options, customer service, lender transparency and more.
Best Student Loans
Federal Direct Student Loan Read full review >
Ascent Tuition Read full review >
Want more Best-Of winners?
Check out our full list of awards, including credit cards, personal loans, mortgages and more.
Frequently asked questions
Great question. NerdWallet's ratings formulas for student loan products takes into account more than 50 data points across multiple categories, including repayment options, customer service, lender transparency, loan eligibility and underwriting criteria.
NerdWallet’s awards are given annually to the best of the best. Our other lists of top products throughout the year may be longer than the lists of award winners, offer additional consumer choices and get updated as products change, products are discontinued and new products emerge.
NerdWallet's award winners are chosen through a rigorous evaluation process involving roughly three dozen writers and editors. For each financial product, we assess the features that we believe are most important to consumers.
Writers and editors use comprehensive scoring formulas that assess each financial product’s key features, weighting them according to their importance to consumers.
Nope. Editorial team members are solely responsible for creating all product reviews and ratings, and these assessments reflect their opinions alone. Only products that meet the editorial team’s standards appear in our Best-Of lists, meaning no company can “buy” an award.
