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Sixup

SixUp is reinventing student lending with an outcomes-based system that funds and incubates high-achieving, low-income students.

ABOUT

Sixup provides responsible, affordable college loans to help high-achieving, underfunded students with little or no credit history graduate from college.  


CHALLENGE 

Sixup believes that the college financing system is broken and wants to help fix it. Many Sixup staff were high-achieving, low-income immigrants and the first in their families to go to college. They took Pell Grants and maxed out on federal student loans. But there was still a gap between their federal aid and private scholarship money and the total they were expected to pay for school. Sixup was created to better serve and lift up the next generation.


SOLUTION

The Sixup loan is designed to help underfunded students upgrade to, and graduate from, more selective four-year colleges. We fund the gap between available financial aid and the total cost of attendance.

Unlike commercial banks, Sixup doesn’t require a credit history, credit score, or co-signer. While it does check users’ credit and factor their credit history into the decision-making process, having a credit score is not required to receive a loan from them (except in select cases).


FINANCIAL HEALTH FOCUS

Sixup estimates, through NCES aggregate data, that for 7 million college-age students across the U.S., the gap between what they’re able to pay in tuition and what they owe ranges anywhere between $5,000 to $15,000 a year. This whopping $35 billion to $135 billion gap in underfunding often forces low-income, high-achieving students to forgo attending their dream schools in favor of less expensive, lower-tier schools.

What They Do

Gap Loans for High-Potential Low-Income Students

Fintech Focus

Lending

Team Members

Sunwoo Hwang
Sunwoo Hwang
Founder, CEO

Year

2018

Location

San Francisco, CA

Status

Active

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