Another Student Loan Consolidation thread (who is Sallie Mae?)

Factual Questions
1

I receive offers periodically from Sallie Mae to consolidate my student loans and I have a few questions.

First off, what exactly is Sallie Mae? Are they a private loan company? or are they affiliated with the state and/or federal government in any way? I ask this because all of my federal loan statements come from them. It was 3 years ago that I went back to school and, despite the intense research and paperwork I was involved with at the time, I’m admittedly hazy on much of what I learned about how student loans work.

My guess is that they are a private company, but how did they get involved with my government loans? Did I choose them at some point?

I’ve read some other threads, like this and this and many seem to recommend consolidating with the U. S. Dept. of Education.

Sallae Mae’s offer is very vague, and reads like junk mail:

Before I pursue getting more information about this deal, does anyone here have any advice?

And BTW, all of my student loans are accounted for on each statement from Sallae Mae. Does this mean that they are already consolidated?

2

It’s been over 10 years since I’ve worked for them (and tried to forget), and I know the laws concerning student loans have changed quite a bit since then, but from what I remember:

Sallie Mae is a federally mandated student loan buyer; they buy up student loans from your local bank so they have more money to make new student loans. There are federal and state regulations they must abide by. But other than that, they are a private company.

“Sallie Mae” stands for the “Student Loan Marketing Association”. There was recently another thread here at the SDMB that dealt with the penchant for financial companies to aconymise their monikers into southern belle type names (e.g. like “Freddie Mac” and “Fannie Mae”).

Just because Sallie Mae now owns all of your loans does not mean they are automatically consolidated. Consolidation is sometimes beneficial, if only to simply reduce the number of loans to keep track of, and sometimes not, as it may lengthen the payback time and interest (as with any loan consolidation). YMWV. Someone more financially oriented may chime in.