Federal aid for a directly-enrolled UK or Ireland degree has a real ceiling: Direct Subsidized and Unsubsidized loans, at a school the Department of Education has specifically approved, with no Pell Grant anywhere in the picture. For a lot of families, that ceiling doesn't cover the full cost -- so the next question is what private lenders actually fill the gap. Search "international student loans" and two names dominate the results: MPOWER Financing and Prodigy Finance. Neither one is what most US applicants going abroad actually need, and knowing why is the fastest way to stop wasting time on the wrong options.

The name that shows up constantly and doesn't apply to you: MPOWER Financing

MPOWER Financing markets itself around "international student loans," and it's a real, legitimate lender -- for the opposite direction from what this app's audience needs. MPOWER's own eligibility material is explicit: it lends to students enrolled at one of its partner schools, and every one of those partner schools is located in the US or Canada. It serves international students, DACA recipients, and refugees coming into North America to study -- not US citizens going out to a UK or Ireland university. There is no UK or Ireland school anywhere in MPOWER's partner network. If a "best loans for studying abroad" list names MPOWER, it's describing a real lender aimed at the mirror-image population.

Discover Student Loans is a second name worth ruling out for a different reason: Discover stopped originating any new student loans at all in January 2024 and sold off its existing loan portfolio the same year. It isn't declining your specific use case -- it's not in the student lending business anymore, for anyone.

What actually works: Sallie Mae, riding the same eligibility list you already checked

Sallie Mae is the private lender named directly by several UK universities' own financial-aid offices -- not review sites, the schools themselves -- as usable by a student enrolling directly abroad. The University of York, University of the Arts London, and Swansea University all list Sallie Mae on their own US-student funding pages as a private-loan option for students studying outside the US, not just for a study-abroad semester routed through a US school.

The real catch, and the one worth knowing before you assume Sallie Mae is a broader workaround: Sallie Mae's own materials require the foreign school to be accredited by an agency the US Secretary of Education recognizes and eligible to participate in federal Title IV programs -- the same eligibility gate that already determines Direct Loan access, covered in our FAFSA piece. Sallie Mae doesn't open the door to a school that federal loans can't reach; it rides the identical school-by-school list. If your target school isn't Title IV-eligible, Sallie Mae isn't a way around that -- check the Department of Education's own Federal School Code Search before assuming either pathway is open.

A narrower specialist built specifically for this exact situation: Earnest, through GEMS

Global Education Management Services (GEMS) is a broker that pairs specifically with Earnest to underwrite loans for US citizens and permanent residents enrolling directly at foreign universities -- the UK, Ireland, continental Europe, Australia, and New Zealand are all explicitly named. Several of the same UK university financial-aid pages that name Sallie Mae name Earnest/GEMS alongside it as one of the small set of lenders actually willing to lend for study outside the US -- Swansea's own funding page states plainly that these are the only lenders it's currently aware of for this purpose. Like most private student lending in the US, this runs on a US-based cosigner model: you'll need a US citizen or permanent resident with an established US credit history and at least two years of US residency to cosign, since your own credit file (likely thin or nonexistent as a recent high school graduate) isn't what's actually being underwritten.

Postgraduate-only options, if that's what you're actually financing

Two more names turn up constantly in this search, and both are real -- but only for a graduate degree, not a bachelor's:

  • Prodigy Finance underwrites loans for postgraduate study only (MBA, STEM master's, law, public policy, and similar programs) at a defined list of partner universities, with no undergraduate product at all. It uses a future-earnings-based underwriting model rather than requiring a US cosigner, which is a genuinely different structure from Sallie Mae or Earnest -- but confirm current US-citizen eligibility directly with Prodigy before counting on it, since state-by-state US lending restrictions add real complexity to its eligibility rules.
  • Lendwise is a UK-based postgraduate lender (master's, MBA, and professional qualifications, up to £100,000) that takes a third underwriting approach again: rather than requiring a US cosigner, it evaluates a US-based applicant's own local credit report directly.

Neither one helps if you're financing an undergraduate degree -- for that, Sallie Mae and Earnest/GEMS remain the two names actually built for this exact use case, and both run on the cosigner model above rather than Lendwise's or Prodigy's alternative underwriting.

What this means for you

  • Cross MPOWER Financing off your list entirely if you're a US citizen studying abroad. It's a real lender doing real work for a real population -- international students coming into the US and Canada -- and that population is the opposite of who this article is for.
  • Don't waste time on Discover. It exited student lending in 2024; any list that still includes it is stale.
  • Sallie Mae and Earnest (via GEMS) are the two names actually built for a US citizen financing an undergraduate degree directly at a UK or Ireland university -- both expect a US-based cosigner, and Sallie Mae specifically still requires your target school to be Title IV-eligible, the same list federal Direct Loans already use.
  • If you're financing a master's or MBA instead, Prodigy Finance and Lendwise are the real options -- but confirm eligibility and underwriting terms directly with the lender, since their models (future-earnings-based vs. your own credit report) differ meaningfully from each other and from the undergraduate-focused lenders above.
  • Check your target school's own Title IV/Federal School Code status before assuming any private loan solves an eligibility gap -- see our FAFSA piece for exactly how to look that up, and our piece on scholarships actually available to US undergrads abroad for a funding source with no eligibility list at all.

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