Many or all companies we feature compensate us. Compensation and editorial research influence how products appear on a page. Student Loans Student Loan Repayment Summer Student Loan Tool Review Updated Apr 05, 2023 4-min read Written by Dave Rathmanner Written by Dave Rathmanner Expertise: Student loans, personal loans, credit cards, small business loans, consumer personal finance habits Dave Rathmanner has researched and developed content on a variety of finance topics, such as student loans, personal loans, credit cards, and small business loans. Dave’s work has been featured by outlets including the Chicago Tribune, Bloomberg, Forbes, CNBC, U.S. News, Consumer Reports, Yahoo Finance, and NPR. Learn more about Dave Rathmanner If you graduated college in the United States with a lot of student loan debt, you’re not alone. In fact, more than half of all college students finish with an average of over $27,000 in student loans. Most graduates also have that balance spread out over multiple lenders and even multiple servicers, making things even more complicated for a new graduate just starting out in a career. Managing those loans can be tricky, especially when they have different interest rates and monthly due dates. Summer Student Loan Tool can help with that by tracking all of your loans in one place—and it’s a free, great planner tool. Based in New York City, Summer was founded by Yale Business graduates Will Sealy and Paul Y. Joo, along with co-founder venture capital investor Vincent Tran, who helped fund small business lender Kabbage. The company launched at Yale in 2017 and is in the process of scaling to meet the needs of college graduates looking for help with student loans. What is the Summer Student Loan Tool? If you’re wondering how it works, the following provides an overview. The Summer Student Loan Tool is designed for 2018 graduates, although previous graduates can currently sign up for a waiting list as the company grows and can take on more capacity. Found at meetsummer.org, Summer is a free tool that keeps you up to date on tips with free notifications, key deadlines, and other ideas and smart tools for how you can repay your loans faster and more efficiently. By putting all of your student loan data into Summer, the tool syncs all of your loans in one place, letting you see the big picture regardless of how many different lenders or servicers you have. It also breaks your loans into principal and interest, so you can see how much your loans are costing you each month. Summer offers a personalized plan to tackle your total debt and manage the student loan process to help you save money by letting you know about programs that can decrease your debt or help you pay it off faster. If you have federal loans, for instance, and can qualify for public service loan forgiveness, Summer will remind you to apply and keep track of your qualified payments for your student debt. It also has tip reminders, such as pointing out that if you make your accrued interest payments before your grace period ends, you’ll save hundreds of dollars. How Does Summer Work? Summer has a variety of tools and tips for college graduates in the planning process and looking to pay off their student debt in a smart way. Personalized loan payment dashboardPayment notificationsUpdates to any student loan policies that affect your situationCustomized repayment plans First, set up a free account on the Summer website. Next, put in your loan information. Summer will keep track of how much of your loan balance is federal and how much is private, to give the best advice. As you make payments and check your dashboard, you’ll not only see those balances dropping, but you’ll get advice and tips on anything that can help you get it paid down faster. Summer School Partners Summer’s tool is free because of the partner relationships that several colleges and universities have with the company. It’s in the school’s best interest to help you get your student loans paid; they lose money when students and graduates default. By partnering with Summer, they can help you… and in doing so, they get their money as well. The Verdict The Summer Student Loan Tool has several benefits already mentioned, but it has some drawbacks as well. Typically, students don’t default on their student loans right away; 2018 graduates, for instance, aren’t even out of their grace period yet and are barely finished with their college careers. Summer, however, is only available to 2018 graduates in this early stage, which can be disappointing if you graduated earlier but still want to take advantage of the benefits. If you’re a 2016 or 2017 graduate, for example, Summer won’t be of use to you, at least not yet. For 2018 graduates, Summer can be a great tool to help get you started on the right track with your student loans. Check it out at MeetSummer.org, where you can also find more contact information for the company and more details. You can also check out our resource listing current and former student loan companies that can help you manage your loans.