How Two HBS Students Changed The Student Loan Market

Juno’s Origin

As my co-founder and I started at Harvard Business School, we decided the student loan market was absurd. We also knew that we could get lower rates if we negotiated as a large group of MBAs, as opposed to applying for loans by ourselves.

So we formed a collective bargaining group and successfully managed to get a bank to offer loans with very low-interest rates to us and our friends who were attending various MBA programs. Pretty much everyone who heard about the deal took advantage of it. 

Juno is effectively the more organized version of the same haphazard effort from back then.

How does Juno work today?

Each year, Juno works to gather demand from MBA students for their student loans. The larger the group, the better the rates that Juno is able to negotiate. As a result, the MBA community works together to ensure new students are aware of Juno. Most first-year students hear about Juno from their classmates, second-year students, and partners. 

Juno gets lenders excited by showing them the anonymized data of students who are signing up. Lenders respond by competing to offer the lowest interest rate options for the group. Through this process, Juno is able to negotiate a student loan option that is more affordable than anything students are able to find by themselves.

Why do students use Juno?

Juno presents a risk-free option to get a student loan with a low-interest rate. It doesn’t cost anything to become a Juno member and sign up for a negotiation group. Furthermore, students are not obligated to utilize the negotiated deal. In fact, Juno is so confident about the deal it negotiates that it offers a generous student loan guarantee that rewards anyone eligible who by some miracle finds a lower interest rate from another lender.

The savings differ from year-to-year and from person to person. Juno estimates that the median MBA member saves more than $10,000 in total interest and fees for each school year’s loans compared to federal student loan options.

This incredible value proposition has quickly made Juno the top choice for MBA students seeking private student loans. More than 25% of students from top MBA programs in the class of 2023 are Juno members. It’s no surprise that Juno has helped MBAs with more than $250 million in student loans.

If you need a student loan for your MBA, we encourage you to join Juno as soon as possible. The earlier you join, the more benefits you can get beyond access to the negotiated deal.

Nikhil Agarwal is a co-founder of Juno. He started Juno in 2018 to negotiate a group discount for student loans and has since successfully grown the business to help students with over $400M of loans. He has an MBA from Harvard and a bachelors in Aerospace Engineering from University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign.