How am I going to pay for this? It's the question I get most.

Chris Abkarians co-founded Juno, which does something I hadn't seen before: it gathers a bunch of students together and uses that collective buying power to negotiate better loan terms from lenders than any one student could get alone.

He explains how the group negotiation works, and more broadly how to think about your financial aid options. That includes comparing offers side by side instead of taking the first one, and the fact that scholarship amounts are sometimes negotiable if you actually ask.

Standard reminder: I'm not a financial advisor and none of this is financial advice. This is a founder explaining how his platform works and what options exist so you can go research them yourself.

What we cover:

• How Juno negotiates loan rates through group buying power
• Private loans compared to federal options
• Comparing loan offers before you accept one
• Whether scholarship amounts can be negotiated
• Questions to ask before signing anything
• Why Chris built the platform

Resources:

Free Application Timeline: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-application-timeline

PA Program Map: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-platform-map

Pre-PA Counseling: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/pre-pa-counseling

Pre-PA Academy: https://prepaclub.thepaplatform.com/landing/academy

Mentioned in this episode:

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One of the most common questions I get is how do people pay for PA School?

Well, today I'm talking to one of the co founders of Juno, which is a very innovative way to look at loans for paying for undergrad, graduate or specifically PA school.

Welcome to the Pre PA Club Podcast.

If you want to learn how to become a physician assistant, you're in the right place.

I'm your host, Savannah Perry.

Let's get to it.

I want to thank mypa Resource and PA School Prep for sponsoring the Prepa Club podcast.

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Definitely check them out if you need help with your content, grammar, flow, making sure that you are on track for turning in your application.

And you can use the Code futurepa for a discount on any of their service options.

PA School Prep is an online course that focuses on the anatomy, physiology and med terms that you'll need for PA School to make sure you feel confident going into that first semester and that you are able to handle what PA School throws at you.

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Hey guys, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for tuning in on this fine Friday.

I hope everyone's having a great November getting ready for Thanksgiving next year, even though I know it's going to look a lot different for a lot of people, myself included.

I think it's normal to be a little sad about missing out on those holiday or family gatherings right now.

But you know, I'm in Georgia and I know the rest of the country is also seeing issues with the pandemic and we're all so sick of this, but gotta do the responsible thing.

And so it'll just be my little, my little family celebrating this year.

But I hope you have a good time this next week, no matter what your celebration looks like.

I am very thrilled to bring you today's episode because it's something a little different.

I think this, this, I guess you want to call it a season.

We have been talking about money and finances a little bit more and I think it's very important because those are not things that we get taught about in undergrad or even in PA school.

We really didn't ever have any financial discussions while I was in PA school, so it can be a little bit overwhelming and feel like you're blindly navigating this path to figure out how you pay for PA school.

So I'm really excited to have Chris, who is one of the co founders of Juno, talk to us today and he's going to go into a lot of detail about explaining to you Juno's approach to student loans and how they use a group buying power to actually negotiate rates from lenders for private student loans.

So if you have been accepted to PA school or anticipating an acceptance this next year, they this episode and interview will be particularly relevant to you.

All of the links you need for more information are in the description, so make sure to check that out and at least look into it.

And that's the one thing that I would like to encourage everyone to do.

And you'll hear Chris encourage you to look at your options, research options.

Even if you're feeling overwhelmed, ask for help.

Don't just take what's right in front of you.

And he has some really amazing tips for paying for PA school and things that I have never thought about or learned about.

So I think you're going to find this extremely helpful.

So that's exciting.

We'll jump in in just a second.

Our gift guide that we talked about last week on the podcast is now live on the blog.

So if you want to check that out, there's lots of ideas there for gifts for all of your friends and family.

And I want to mention that you need to be on the lookout next week for for our Black Friday specials.

Make sure that you are on the newsletter, go to the paplatform.com newsletter and that you are following us on social media HEPA platform for some giveaways, some really great deals, and I love Black Friday.

I'm actually really okay with it being online and I need to go ahead and figure out what I'm looking for.

But if you need help with PA school stuff, interview stuff, you'll definitely want to check that out.

All right, let's get into our interview with Chris from Juno and I hope you find this helpful.

Follow us on Instagram and we'll make sure you know how to find out more about Juno there as well.

Thanks for having me.

My name is Chris Evgarians.

I'm one of the co founders of Juno, which is the first student loan collective bargaining group.

We'll get into what that actually means.

But by way of background, I went to undergrad at Duke and then Harvard Business School and in the process racked up a lot of student loan debt, which forced me to think of creative ways to make that cheaper for myself, my classmates, and hopefully you.

In between School, I spent some time working in management consulting and then at Netflix for a few years where I worked on negotiating licensing deals and thinking through how to do that for a large number of television shows.

So done a lot of negotiation for a lot of different things.

And once I got a bill for a lot of student loans, which we'll get into, decided that we should try to negotiate that too.

Interesting.

Yeah, I'm really interested because I've read all about Juno and looked at all of your stuff and how the process actually works and kind of why nobody did that before, but I think it's definitely very innovative.

And student loans when it comes to PA school and medical education in general are kind of obscene at times.

So what, what is the story of Juno?

How did that idea.

How was it born?

Yeah, it's a fun story.

So a little over two years ago, I got into business school and when you like you'd have a lot of graduate programs, there was a Facebook group and a WhatsApp group that the incoming class put together.

And in that group a bunch of people started talking about, hey, where are you getting your student loans from?

What rates are you getting?

And one of my other classmates started comparing offers that he'd gotten from a few different places, and he was just really surprised that the rates were really different when he started to rate shop much more than you expected them to be.

So we started putting together just a public Google sheet for people at a bunch of different schools to enter the rates that they got anonymously.

And they, along with a few basic factors about themselves and realized, hey, this doesn't really make that much sense.

People should be talking to each other, comparing what they're getting and making sure that they are actually getting the best possible deal for themselves.

That was stage one.

About a week later, there were a lot of people using that sheet.

And my co founder had the brilliant idea of trying to get a bulk discount on student loans.

If we were able to talk to everybody who was in that group and say, hey, if we go to a bunch of different banks as one group, can we get them to give us a discount that they wouldn't give to any of us as individuals?

And we somehow pulled that off in a few weeks before we ever met in person, set foot on campus.

And over the course of the last two years, we rolled out that same concept across a much wider set of schools.

We can get into, like, the specifics of kind of how that negotiation process works today for somebody who might be going to school next year or need a new student loan for their following academic year.

But I'll pause there if there's any follow ups on that.

Yeah, I definitely want to hear more about specifics of how everything works.

I think it's interesting.

I mean, that's.

It seems fairly new.

I mean, two years ago, that's not that long, but definitely something needed.

And I think it's just funny that you say that because we have a Facebook group for pre pas and that same question comes up almost every day.

Where are you getting your loans?

Who?

How do we get loans?

How do we pay for school?

When I was in PA school, we got no financial education.

We didn't talk about negotiating salaries, we didn't talk about how to pay back our student loans.

It was, that just wasn't something that I guess they put value on.

And so you are.

It does feel like as the student who's never done this, you're navigating it very blindly, trying to figure out the best options.

And sometimes I think a lot of you'll just get flustered and pick what's right in front of them and don't even know that there are options to explore.

So that's why I'm trying to really expose everyone to different things that they should.

Should at least look into.

For sure.

Yeah, makes sense that y' all are business people getting together and making this happen.

So, yeah, walk us through.

Well, let me ask a few just kind of simple questions.

As far as Juno goes, can it pay?

I mean, are we looking at loans for strictly graduate education, or is this something that could apply to people in an undergrad graduate level too?

So there's three situations in which what we do makes sense for people.

So every year there's up to a million people in undergrad who hit a limit on how much money they can borrow from the federal government.

And for those people, they typically tend to then start getting a lot of pieces of mail from different student loan companies and different private lenders at their homes saying, hey, apply for this and take this.

And that's still surprisingly the primary method of acquisition, like marketing that some companies do.

Somebody gets that piece of mail, they can't borrow more money from the federal government.

And then they'll typically just go with what they got.

And so it's hard to identify who that is.

But when we're talking about up to a million people, it's really important for us to find out how to get in front of that group and just say, hey, what we negotiate as a deal might not actually be the best thing for you, but by all means, just hear us out and don't make any decisions until you've spent at least a few hours compared to the different options that you've got in front of you.

The second group of people for whom I think this makes a lot of sense is there are, there's lots of grad students.

This is much very true for MBAs and it's true for lots of others as well who will take the.

So when you're a grad student, you have two options generally.

You can have get a private loan or you can go with the Grad plus loan from the federal government.

And I'd say for a very large portion of people, getting that grad plus loan from the federal government is the best thing to do.

Okay.

And especially for lots of medical professionals who would be going into a non profit work setting that can forgive those loans.

And so we don't ever want somebody to do something that's not in their best interests.

But we do think it's valuable to at least make sure that you compare what your options look like.

And so we still encourage people to just get in touch with us.

And whether it's for something that you might need now or whether you want to refinance those loans after you graduate, that's when something would work.

And then the third bucket is it's actually where we've got Most of our PAs, physicians and dentists coming in is a lot of people who want to refinance their loans.

And it's very similar concept.

We actually did the same thing about a year and a half ago where people who were graduating the year before us reached out and asked, hey, can we create a negotiation group for student loan refinancing?

And so that now exists.

I actually am in the process of using it today.

And so yeah, maybe it would be helpful if I get a little bit into some of the process because I.

Want to definitely walk us through.

And that was one of my questions was is it can be used for refinancing?

So yeah, so let's say somebody has been accepted to PA school, they've maxed out their federal loans.

There are some PA programs that I think the most expensive one, the tuition alone is hitting around 160 now.

And then that's in California where the living expenses are going to be also very high.

So what, what would the person's next steps be?

And also at what point would they Start this process, ideally.

Yeah.

So two points I want to make sure I raise here.

So we do a couple of webinars on this throughout the year.

In an ideal world, people don't need to use any of the loans that we're able to negotiate.

And I wish I didn't have to when I went through school.

I think there's two things people should try to maximize the value of if they can.

So one, that's there's a lot of external scholarships out there that are a little bit harder to find than just Googling, like, best scholarships for PA school.

My recommendation on that front would be to reach out to your school's financial aid offices and ask them for a list of all the scholarships that people have previously used to pay for that school.

And you'll often be surprised by the number of just like, fellowships that aren't really marketed anywhere and that have almost nobody apply to them.

And then the second thing is, we've actually seen a lot of success in encouraging people to try to negotiate the actual amount of financial aid they receive from their schools.

For MBA students and law students, we put together just like basically a public tool for them to report anonymously how much free aid they got.

So not loans, just discounts on their tuition and say, my general advice on that front, before we even talk about that loan process, is lots of schools already have a portion of when you get a reward letter for how much financial aid the school is going to give you.

Many schools and programs already have a reserve that they're expecting people to negotiate for, so they're already expecting a lot of people to come back and say, hey, I really want to go here, but School a gave me 5,000 more dollars a year.

Can you please match that or help me make the numbers work a little bit better?

It's very anecdotal because we don't record the number of times this works, but I can say it works often enough that it's in your best interest to try.

And when a school is admitted to you, if you're asking for some more help, they're not going to rescind that admission.

So you might feel a little bit uneasy about it, but you really don't have anything to lose.

I'll get off that soapbox on asking the world for things for a second.

I'm just.

I've never heard that.

This is like, eye opening, like I should have.

I may at least try.

Like you said, the worst that happens, they say no, right?

Yep.

Gosh.

Okay, wait.

One question, though.

Who would Someone ask just the financial aid department.

Yeah.

Okay, good to know.

And the earlier the better if you can.

And typically like the strategy that does work better in that scenario is when you are deciding between two schools because a lot of times schools care a lot about their yield rate too.

Percentage of people admitted you then choose to attend.

So you have a little bit more negotiating power than you might think you do.

It just they're counting on people not asking.

Interesting.

Okay, good to know.

So into your main question around how does the actual process work?

The way this negotiation group works is we have a goal of everything is centered around what we call our auction period.

And so at some point in the spring we typically invite a large number of banks, credit unions and other lenders, many of which you've heard of, to participate in an auction for our collective business.

And so this past year we had about 11 of those lenders compete.

And what they did was we told them information about how many people in the group expressed interest in getting the student loan through this group if we were able to get the lowest rates, as well as some basic information about the credit profile and how much people want to borrow and where they're going to school.

We don't share anybody's names or emails or anything.

It's just an aggregate view and that gets these lenders excited about trying to change things up internally.

And then we give them a couple of weeks to respond to us with lots of data on the different rates that they would charge each person in the group.

And then we compare all those, get down to a few final contenders, try to negotiate that a little bit further, and then partner with 1, 2, 3 of these lenders in the given period who are offering the best overall deals for ARM group.

What that means for any student or parent who's listening is on our side.

We try to make this a no brainer to just indicate interest.

So our goal is before we run that auction process to have as many people who could possibly be interested.

So when somebody signs up on joinjuno.com all they have to tell us is, is just like their name email where they're going to school in their grad year.

They can optionally give us more information, which most people do around a self reported credit score range.

We don't pull anybody's credit or ask for your Social Security number as well as an estimate for how much you think you might need to borrow for that following academic year.

And a few other questions that just help the lenders that we work with come up with more accurate estimates for what they would charge people in a group.

So that's actually kind of it.

It's almost like signing up for a mailing list.

It's free for students and parents.

We don't have the ability to take payment information.

And we'll just send frequent updates about once a month until we run that auction about the size and composition of the group.

Then we'll send more updates on how that conversation with lenders is going.

And then by May 1, we'll have just a unique set of links that you could use to just check and see how does this compare to any other option that I might be looking at?

Thankfully, the last couple of times that we've done this, well, every time we've done this, we've been confident that the rates that we've negotiated for people are the absolute lowest rates.

And the only thing that we ask is, if you're watching this in June and you found a lower rate somewhere else, please just let us know so we can go partner with that lender.

Okay, that sounds kind of fun.

Like, that process is probably also stressful, but kind of.

I like the idea of it being an auction where you're kind of letting them fight for.

For this business.

I mean, that's really interesting.

So, like, this is just like, the whole concept to me is.

Is so new, but also really cool.

So when someone would need to apply.

So PA schools have different start dates.

There's, like, typically a May and August and a January start.

Where would those students fall?

And usually acceptances happen the fall.

Like, would they be applying probably.

Or visiting Juneau now or in the spring?

When would they jump in?

That's a great question.

So whenever you do say the earlier the better, because as soon as you sign up, you actually also just.

If you let us know when your intended start date is, then you will either have one of two situations happen.

We have a current slate of deals that we've negotiated with a few lenders that are available.

And so someone starting in January or even starting in May, they probably use those.

If they looked at that and they.

What they see.

And then if you're starting a little bit later than that, there's a chance that some of those lenders might change for August if we find somebody else who's willing to provide slightly better terms and rates than what we currently have.

Okay, cool.

So it's kind of.

They can check and then maybe check back if they're starting a little bit later, but go ahead and start the process.

One of the things that I really liked when I was kind of talking with you guys and looking at the website is, and if anyone goes and visits the website, we'll have the link in the description.

But you're very transparent about this process, which I think is really great and I really appreciate.

And there was, I think there was something on there about how if somebody does go through your link, they can possibly get some money back.

Can you explain that?

Yeah.

So there's different ways that we're able to negotiate with lenders.

Some of them are able to change the specific rates that they charge to people who use our group's link versus going directly to that lender's website.

For some, that's a little bit too complicated technically.

And so instead it's easier for them to just give cash back to people.

And I'd say what matters to us at the end of the day is making it really easy for people to compare what their options look like on a like to like basis.

And so what we built out is a calculator that is, I think, a little bit more robust than what else is out there.

So on our site, on our resources section, there's a grad school comparison calculator.

We'll roll out an undergrad version of that shortly too, which just lets you see basically a ranking of like, what is my actual best deal including and not including cash back first rate discounts.

Otherwise, honestly, this process is complicated.

I have lots of friends who worked in finance and banking and who come for this and suddenly feel like they're a deer in the headlights.

And that's honestly how I felt too.

And I thought I was pretty good with numbers.

And so a lot of people are counting on you to feel a little bit overwhelmed and maybe make a decision that is in front of you.

And if we can do anything to make it a little bit easier to understand what those options are, we'd love to try to.

Yeah.

So what, and again, looking at our website, when you are looking at a loan or an option for borrowing money, what are some things people should be looking at?

Because I think when, and I am a novice when it comes to money, 100%, but when I look at money, like the main thing I look at is the interest rate.

Okay, what's the interest rate?

But after visiting the Juno website and reading over things, there's a lot more, it seems like, that goes into deciding what's a good offer and a good loan for someone.

That's a great question.

Glad you asked it.

There's four things primarily that you should think through when you're comparing one offer to the next.

So there's interest rate, there's the term of the loan, so how long you have to pay it back, the type of rate it is, whether it's fixed or variable, and the repayment type, which let me get into what each of those for me.

So your interest rate itself is what people focus on the most for good reason, it's extremely important.

But you can't look at it independently of these other three factors because let's say you wanted to get the lowest interest rate and just go with that, then you might be picking the lowest interest rate for a student loan today in the private market is likely to be for a five year term.

So a five year term will typically have a lower interest rate than a 10 year term or a 15 year term.

But if your term is short and you have a low interest rate, the actual amount of money that you have to pay back every month could be really high.

And so it might not actually make sense for you.

So you have your interest rate, you have your term, which is the number of years that you have to pay something back, you have your rate type, which is extremely important because a fixed rate means the amount that you're going to pay per month isn't going to change.

Like your interest rate is the same throughout the entire term of the loan.

And the variable rate might be lower today, but it could go up over time.

And it's just, I'd say sometimes there's a lot of people for whom taking a risk with a variable interest rate is okay, and probably many more people for whom it causes unnecessary risk and mental stress that is probably best avoided.

It honestly does vary from person to person.

I'll just say based on the data that a super majority of people typically take fixed rate lumps.

And I'd imagine that that is actually the right decision for most people.

Repayment type is that fourth thing that I do want to make sure I touch on.

And so there's four ways that you can repay a private student loan and you have options that you can select on the date that you actually take out the loan.

And so they range from you can start paying back the full loan immediately to you don't have to pay anything back until six months after you graduate.

And the thing to keep in mind is the sooner you start paying back the loan, typically the lower the interest rate that will get advertised to you.

And so we have one example that might make this a little bit more concrete.

If you were only shopping for the lowest interest rate, it's likely that you would be selecting the buttons on a website that would give you a five year term, a variable interest rate and immediate repayment.

And what that would mean is you would have to start paying back a pretty large amount 30 days after you take out the loan, and that amount could increase over time.

It's really important to make sure that you're not just optimizing for that lowest rate, but you're optimizing for the payment that makes sense for you.

Yes, that having an example helps.

Is there anyone throughout this process on the Juno team that helps people make these decisions as far as like, support or somebody where they can kind of make sure they're, you know, choosing the right thing?

So what we, we have basically are available for phone calls and help all the time.

And while we're not registered financial advisors, we will provide you with the tools that a lot of financial aid offices are starting to use.

So there's a state that maybe it'd be helpful to build trust to know that there are some business school financial aid offices that now use our calculators to help their students understand how to walk through and what terms and some of these different factors and levers actually mean.

So we will try to be as transparent about how all this works in writing and in tools and are always happy to get on the phone and walk through them.

Kind of help point you in the right direction a little bit.

Awesome.

Well, this is, I think, a great, great tool for people to know about, especially just some of the messages and emails I've gotten.

And I always start them out.

I am not an expert in financial aid.

That's my first sentence because it is so complicated and there's so many options and so many things.

But I think this is a great tool and option for people to look at and it seems just very low risk to see if it's a great option, essentially.

Appreciate you saying that.

I guess I think the last thing I would say on that front is it's okay to feel like this is overwhelming.

I don't think there's a single person to whom it doesn't feel overwhelmed.

And so it takes a lot to get over the hurdle of feeling like it's okay to talk about money and ask questions and maybe feel like we're not the most well informed about a particular subject.

But almost everybody else around you has the same questions.

And to the extent that you're willing to just ask them we're here to help answer them.

Yes.

And I think I will definitely send people your way when they come to me with their loan questions from now.

On,.

Especially the private loan ones.

But.

Well, I think this is a great tool.

Where can people go to find more as far as website, social media?

Where's the best place to kind of dive in a little bit more?

Yeah.

If you just go to joinjuno.com, everything will be there.

Perfect.

We will make sure everybody has access to that link and I'm sure you'll get some questions, but we'll let them know how they can connect with you as well.

Thank you for taking the time to tell us about Juno.

Thank you, Sven.