Saving money on your student loans, ranking grad programs based on salary-to-debt ratios, plus life as a Columbia Business School grad. All in today’s show.

Today’s guest, Amanda Wood, graduated from Vassar College in 2009 with a degree in social psychology and economics. After graduation, she worked at BNY Mellon and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. In 2014 she earned her MBA at Columbia Business School. Since 2013, she has worked in business development for SoFi. In March 2016, she became the Director of SoFi’s Entrepreneur Program, and in December, she became the Director, Business Operations & Strategy at SoFi. Welcome, Amanda!

How can students save money with SoFi? [1:20] 

Students can save money by refinancing their student loans with us.

When I went to b-school I graduated with five to six different loans. What SoFi does is consolidate all your loans into one, so you only make one monthly payment to one lender, which saves time. And we can lower your interest rate, which saves money.

Do you originate loans, or just refinance them? [2:00]

We don’t do new school loans, except to parents. We refinance loans. One of the ways we can offer such great savings is by offering great interest rates, and we do that by lending to “safe” borrowers who have graduated and are employed.

It’s for US citizens and permanent residents only, and we have no plans to expand at this point. [3:25]

What are your career resources? [3:40]

We have a career services team in house that helps place borrowers.

We do a bit of reactive help – say, if a borrower loses their job we can help them find a new job.

But we also work with people proactively who are gainfully employed and want to change their job (from law to tech, etc).

What is the Entrepreneur Program? [4:50]

We started when we were a very young company. We want to help people progress.

For participants in the Entrepreneur Program, we waive the income guidelines (since many entrepreneurs pay themselves only a token salary in the early stages of their company). And they can defer repayment for up to a year.

We have a kickoff day in San Francisco where participants can meet each other and discuss their ideas. We coach them through various stages of their business – pitching, marketing, etc. And we conclude with a demo day – we’ve seen a number of investments result from that.

Does interest accrue during the deferment? [7:10]

Yes, and some people opt to pay interest-only payments during that time.

You mentioned the income requirement. What are your other criteria for underwriting? [7:45]

We’re looking at ability to pay. So we look at their monthly income, expenses (based on where they live, etc), their total loan balance, and their other debts.

We’re also looking for a generally responsible financial history: no recent bankruptcy or significant late payment history.

What is Return on Education? [9:20]

We realized we have all this fantastic data on an interesting group of people – we know how much people are making, what they studied, how much debt they have. We wanted to use that to help people make decisions about what schools to go to.