1. Varo - Varo is a bank that offers up to 5.00% APY on the first $5,000 with qualifying direct deposits. Read our full Varo review.

2. Consumers Credit Union - CCU offers up to 5.00% APY on your checking account for the first $10,000. The requirements to earn are tiered. Read our full Consumers Credit Union Review.

3. PiBank - PiBank is the online brand of Intercredit Bank, N.A and offers 4.40% APY with no monthly maintenance fees and no minimum balance requirements. However, lots of consumers complain about only being allow to withdraw via wire transfer. Read our full Pibank review.

4. Everbank - Everbank offers a boosted rate of 4.10% guaranteed for 90 days in partnership with Raisin. Plus, they're currently offering a cash bonus of up to $1,200 for new deposits. Read our full Everbank review.

5. CIT Bank - CIT Platinum Savings a two-tiered savings account. 

Open an account with promo code CITBoost and you’ll earn 4.10% APY* on balances of $5,000 or more for the first six months* — that’s 10x the national average savings rate.

After 6 months, you'll return to the regular rate of 3.75% APY* with a $5,000 minimum balance. Otherwise you'll earn 0.25% APY. See website for full details. Read our full CIT Bank review.

You can find a full list of the best high yield savings accounts here >>

How High Yield Savings Accounts Work And Why Rates Matter?

High-yield savings accounts function just like traditional savings accounts, but they pay a much higher annual percentage yield (APY) — often 10 to 15 times more. You can see how these rates compare to the savings rates at the 10 largest banks in America - and these rates put them to shame.

"We're seeing banks become increasingly competitive on both APY and bonus offers to start June." - Robert Farrington

The banks and credit unions on this list typically always have above-average rates, so even if the Federal Reserve lowers rates and these accounts lower their rates, you'll still be head. 

For example, a $10,000 balance earning 4.00% APY will generate about $400 in interest per year, compared with less than $20 at a big-bank rate of 0.20%. That gap makes it worth tracking rate changes regularly and switching institutions if your current bank stops staying competitive.

However, we expect more rates to dip below that 4.00% level in the coming weeks.

What To Know Before Opening An Account

Before opening a new account, review the key details that determine how much you’ll earn — and how easily you can access your funds.

• Watch For Intro Or Promo Rates: APYs can rise or fall at any time. But a strong introductory rate doesn’t guarantee long-term performance. None of the rates listed here are introductory, but some referral codes may only be temporary rates.
• Transfer Limits: Federal rules no longer cap savings withdrawals at six per month, but many banks still impose limits.
• Safety: Confirm that the institution is FDIC- or NCUA-insured, which protects up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank or credit union.
• Access: Many top-yield accounts are online-only. Make sure you can deposit via mobile app and link external accounts for easy transfers.

These details help you separate truly high-performing savings options from accounts that look appealing but may include hidden limitations or slower rate adjustments.

How We Track And Verify Rates

At The College Investor, our goal is to help you make smart, confident decisions about your money. To create this list, our editorial team reviews savings account rates daily across more than 50 banks, credit unions, and fintechs. We verify data using each institution’s official website, rate disclosures, and regulatory filings.

Only accounts available to U.S. consumers and insured by the FDIC or NCUA are included.

Our coverage is independent and editorially driven - we never rank accounts based on compensation. While we may earn a referral fee when you open an account through certain links, this does not influence our recommendations or reviews. Our opinions are our own, based on a consistent evaluation of usability, fees, yields, and customer experience.

FAQs

How often do savings account rates change?

Banks can adjust rates daily or weekly based on market conditions.

Are online banks safe?

Yes — as long as they’re FDIC-insured. Verify coverage on the FDIC’s BankFind site.

Is interest on savings accounts taxable?

Yes. You’ll receive a 1099-INT if you earn $10 or more in interest.

Should I move my money if rates drop?

It depends on the difference in APY and your transfer limits, and frequent rate chasing can reduce returns if transfers take time.

Sixty-two members of Congress are demanding the Department of Education act before millions more borrowers fall into default and they want answers by June 22.

A June 7 letter (PDF File) led by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), along with Representatives Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and André Carson (D-Ind.), warns Education Secretary Linda McMahon that the U.S. is facing "the largest student loan default and delinquency crisis on record." 

This comes as the entire student loan system is changing on July 1 - from new repayment plans, loan caps, and borrowers in the SAVE plan being forced to leave forbearance. 

Why It Matters

The lawmakers argue the administration's policies are driving the crisis and that the financial damage is spreading well beyond student loan borrowers and into credit markets, housing, and household budgets.

Starting July 1, federal loan servicers will begin sending 90-day notices to roughly 7 million borrowers stuck in the SAVE forbearance. Borrowers who don't pick a new plan get moved into the Standard or Tiered Standard plan, which can raise monthly payments by hundreds of dollars.

By The Numbers

Close to 9 million borrowers are now in default — up from about 5 million last summer, according to a February analysis by The Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers. Of those, 3.6 million defaulted during the administration's first year, or roughly one every nine seconds in 2025.

One in four borrowers with payments due is delinquent. 75% of those who slid from delinquency into default had never defaulted before. Around 2 million borrowers saw their credit scores fall by an average of 100 points in 2025.

When collections fully resume, Moody's Analytics estimates more than $30 billion could be seized from paychecks, Social Security checks, and tax refunds by the end of 2027.

What They're Asking

The coalition laid out five steps for the Department of Education to take immediately:

• Cancel debt for borrowers who already qualify under existing programs, including IDR forgiveness, Total and Permanent Disability discharge, closed school discharge, borrower defense, and Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
• Rehire fired Federal Student Aid staff. The letter notes ED cut 653 FSA employees (more than 40% of the office that manages loans and oversees servicers).
• Clear the backlog of income-driven repayment applications.
• Enroll all 7.5 million SAVE borrowers in the lowest-cost plan available to them if they don't choose one.
• Keep the pause on forced collections, end the agreement handing default collections to the Treasury Department, and create an interest-free default-prevention forbearance.

The lawmakers asked McMahon to respond in writing by June 22, 2026.

How This Connects

This is the second time in eight months that a Democratic coalition has pressed ED on the default cliff. 

The pressure tracks a transition The College Investor has covered closely: the SAVE plan was permanently blocked by court order, and its forbearance is set to end this fall. 

As we've reported, borrowers leaving SAVE can move to IBR, or to the new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) launching July 1, while PAYE and ICR are scheduled to disappear by mid-2028 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, narrowing the menu of affordable options.

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International graduate enrollment at U.S. colleges fell again this year, and the financial damage is showing up fast in layoffs, budget deficits, and shuttered degree programs.

For years, foreign graduate students were a quiet engine of university finances: paying full tuition, staffing research labs, and filling master's programs that schools built out to grow revenue. Now that engine is stalling. 

Tighter visa policies, thousands of revoked visas, and growing uncertainty about studying in the U.S. have cut into the pipeline, and the institutions that bet most heavily on international enrollment are the ones now scrambling to close the gap.

Why It Matters

International graduate students are among the most lucrative enrollees on campus. They often pay full tuition, and many universities have leaned on them to subsidize research and balance budgets.

As visa approvals tighten under the Trump administration, the schools most dependent on those students are absorbing the largest hits.

By The Numbers

According to reporting by Higher Ed Drive, graduate enrollment dipped 2.7% from 2023-24 to 2024-25 (a loss of roughly 13,800 students) ending four years of steady growth.

And the current year looks worse. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found international graduate enrollment sank 4.3% in spring 2026 compared to a year earlier. Public four-year colleges were hit hardest, with a 9.2% year-over-year drop.

In a separate spring survey, 84% of 149 U.S. colleges cited restrictive visa policies as a significant challenge to international enrollment, per a Studyportals report — up from 68% five months earlier and 58% in 2024.

The Damage

Higher Ed Drive noted the losses of international graduate students are already forcing colleges to cut:

DePaul University in Chicago saw overall international enrollment fall by about 755 students in fall 2025, driven by a roughly 62% year-over-year drop in new international graduate students. The university has since laid off 114 staff members (8% of its workforce) while facing a multimillion-dollar deficit.

At the University of North Texas, more than half of its 12,406 graduate students in fall 2024 came from outside the U.S. This year, 2,700 graduate applicants accepted to UNT master's programs were unable to attend. Leaders announced plans to shutter dozens of degree programs and consolidate departments.

The University of Texas at Arlington saw international enrollment drop 20% year over year to 3,689 students in fall 2025, led by a 36.8% drop in foreign graduate students. The school projected that a 40% decline in international graduate students would end up creating a tuition revenue loss of $13 million to $15.6 million for fiscal 2026.

How This Connects

International students aren't eligible for federal financial aid, so those who do enroll typically pay cash or use private international student loans from lenders like MPower Financing, Prodigy Finance, and Earnest. 

That makes them a reliable source of full-price tuition and a costly group for universities to lose. As we've tracked in our list of colleges closing in 2026, enrollment shortfalls are pushing more schools toward layoffs, mergers, and closures.

With the State Department revoking roughly 8,000 student visas in the past year and new travel and visa restrictions expanding, the pipeline of incoming international graduate students could shrink further in 2026-27, leaving tuition-dependent universities to plan for another round of budget pain.

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When a college tells a family it will “meet 100% of demonstrated financial need,” most parents hear a promise: the school has looked at what we can pay, and it will cover the rest. The reality is far from being that simple.

Demonstrated financial need is a number the college itself defines, and the aid used to “meet” that need often includes student loans the family must repay, including federal Parent PLUS loans that the parent is expected to borrow on the student’s behalf.

The school is essentially the judge, jury, and executioner when deciding on what each family pays.

The result is a financial aid system where two schools can look at the same family and produce wildly different numbers for what that family “needs” and how much of that need they will cover with free money versus debt. For families trying to compare financial offers, the gap between the marketing language and the math is where financial damage happens.

How Colleges Decide What You "Need"

The starting point for most colleges is the Free Application For Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and their federal formulas. After a family files the FAFSA, the federal government produces a Student Aid Index, or SAI, which is an indicator of financial need. The SAI can range from -$1,500 to $999,999.

While to government tries to clarify that this number is NOT expected family contribution - many colleges use it that way. This means they subtract the SAI and any outside scholarships from its own published Cost of Attendance to arrive at demonstrated need.

Cost Of Attendance - SAI = Demonstrated Need

That sounds standardized. It isn’t. Three variables make the same family’s “need” change dramatically from school to school.

First, the Cost of Attendance itself varies. Federal rules give schools wide latitude to set room, board, textbooks, transportation, and personal expense allowances. One school may estimate $14,000 for off-campus housing while a peer two miles away estimates $19,000. Higher COA means higher demonstrated need on paper, but it does not mean the school will fund the difference.

Recent studies have shown that over half of colleges significantly underestimate the cost of attendance.

Second, about 250 mostly private colleges use the CSS Profile in addition to the FAFSA. The CSS Profile feeds an Institutional Methodology that asks for things the FAFSA ignores: home equity, the income of a non-custodial parent, small business value, sibling assets, and medical expenses. The Institutional Methodology can produce an expected family contribution that is higher or lower than the federal number. This means that the same family can have “no need” at one school and significant need at another.

Many of these schools also market "no tuition for families making less than a certain amount". What you might miss is the asterisks that says "depending on assets". Because the CSS Profile schools are known to check assets more heavily.

Third, the SAI no longer divides the parent contribution by the number of children in college at the same time. Families with two or three kids enrolled simultaneously lost a meaningful discount when the federal formula changed. Some private schools that use the CSS Profile still apply a sibling adjustment but many do not.

"Meeting Need" Is Where Colleges Get Tricky

Once a school has settled on your need number, it attempts to build a financial aid package to cover it. The package is split into two categories: gift aid (grants and scholarships you keep) and self-help aid (student loans you repay and work-study you have to earn). Both count toward “meeting need.”

Self-help is where the language strains. Work-study is listed as aid, but the student receives no money until they find a campus job and work the hours. The earnings come in a paycheck and cannot be applied to the tuition bill. Federal subsidized and unsubsidized loans are also counted as aid that meets need, but they are debt the student must repay with interest after leaving school.

The bigger issue is preferential packaging. Most selective private schools, and a growing share of publics, do not give every admitted student the same mix. Students the school most wants to enroll (typically the highest scorers or full-pay applicants who add direct cash revenue) receive packages heavy on grants. Students the school is willing to admit but not chase get financial packages heavy on loans and work-study.

Industry surveys have found roughly 63% of private colleges use differential packaging compared with about 15% of publics.

Some schools then “gap” the rest of the package, meaning they offer aid that does not fully meet calculated need and leave the family to find the difference. A school can claim to be need-blind in admissions while still gapping awards once a student is accepted.

Student and Parent Loans Enter The Picture

The most controversial way schools “meet need” (or close gaps in their packaging) is by writing Parent PLUS loans into the award letter. Parent PLUS loans are federal loans taken by the parent, not the student, with virtually no underwriting beyond a basic credit check.

Until this year, parents could borrow up to the full cost of attendance minus other aid. However, starting July 1, new caps will limit borrowing to $20,000 per year and $65,000 total per child.

A New America report identified 41 universities (23 private and 18 public) that appear to be aggressively steering low- and lower-middle-income families into PLUS loans they cannot afford. The findings are blunt.

In 2023, those 41 schools collectively spent $2.4 billion of their own institutional aid on students the federal government deemed to have no financial need, while pushing families with actual need towards loans. 

More than 32,000 families of Pell Grant recipients at those 41 schools left with a median Parent PLUS debt load of roughly $30,000 each. At the 23 private universities on the list, the median PLUS debt for Pell families approached $40,000. 

What This Means For Your Family

Two practical implications follow from how need is defined and met.

First: never compare schools by the percentage of need they “meet.” A school meeting 100% of need with $30,000 in loans per year is not equivalent to a school meeting 100% with grants. Compare net price (the bottom-line out-of-pocket cost after grants and scholarships only) and compare the gift aid versus self-help split on each award letter. Remove Parent PLUS loans, federal direct loans, and work-study out of any “aid” total before you compare.

You can also look for "no loan colleges", which are schools that promise to meet need with grants and scholarships, not loans.

Second: the family contribution your school calculates is not necessarily what you can actually afford. The SAI is a tool, not a budget. Families consistently report that the SAI overstates what they can pay, particularly in high-cost-of-living regions. If the only way to close the gap is borrowing more than one year of household income in PLUS loans, the answer is almost always to choose a different school.

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The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies released its fiscal year 2027 spending bill (PDF File), and it pays for a Pell Grant increase by permanently ending subsidized federal student loans.

The bill cuts the U.S. Department of Education's budget by 10%, or roughly $8 billion, with deep reductions to K-12 programs, Federal Work Study, and education research. It is the first step in a long appropriations process, but the headline tradeoff is clear: students gain a small Pell bump and lose one of the most affordable loans available to them.

By The Numbers

• $7,445: new maximum Pell Grant award, a $50 increase
• $15 billion+:  mandatory spending added to close the Pell shortfall
• $16 billion: projected 10-year savings from eliminating subsidized loans, redirected entirely to Pell
• $6,000: average increase in student debt per borrower from losing the subsidy, per a National College Attainment Network (NCAN) analysis
• 84%: share of Pell recipients who take out student loans, compared with under half of non-Pell students

What The Proposed Changes Look Like

Subsidized loans go to undergraduates with demonstrated financial need, and the government covers the interest while the student is in school. Under the bill, no new subsidized loans would be issued after July 1, 2027. There's a grandfathering clause where students already borrowing would keep their eligibility through the end of their program.

In place of subsidized loans, undergraduates could borrow the same amount in unsubsidized loans — but interest would accrue from day one, adding thousands in cost over the life of the loan. The bill also cuts Federal Work-Study by 26% to $908 million and the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (FSEOG) by 40% to $546 million.

Michele Zampini, Associate Vice President for Federal Policy & Advocacy at TICAS, warned the math doesn't favor low-income students: "Eliminating subsidized loans, which go to undergraduate students with high financial need, could increase overall college costs for these students by thousands of dollars."

How This Connects

The proposal revives an idea from last year's One Big Beautiful Bill debate that didn't make the final law. But the broader trend is already locked in. The reconciliation bill enacted in 2025 cut more than $300 billion from federal student loans over a decade, and a wave of changes takes effect July 1, 2026: including a new $257,500 lifetime borrowing limit, annual and lifetime caps on Parent PLUS loans, loan proration for part-time students, and the end of Grad PLUS loans.

Eliminating subsidized loans on top of those changes would potentially push more students toward private student loans, where rates are higher and protections are weaker, or prevent them from borrowing for college at all. For families weighing how to pay for college, the affordability gap that subsidized loans were designed to fill is shrinking fast.

It's important to remember that this is a subcommittee proposal, not law. It must clear the full Appropriations Committee, the House floor, the Senate, before anything reaches the president.

Expect the subsidized loan provision to be a flashpoint as negotiations continue.

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