On July 1, rates on existing variable-rate student loans will rise by 1.84%, as they make their annual adjustment based on the results of recent 91-day Treasury-bill auctions. As a result, rates on loans from the primary federal program will move to 7.143% from 5.30%, reflecting the recent rise in interest rates.

One option for students facing higher rates is to participate in one of 40 or so consolidated loan programs, many of them now offered electronically. Consolidators refinance loans from many different lenders such as Stafford, the biggest federal student loan program, and PLUS (for Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students). The student borrower can then get a fixed-rate loan for as long as 30 years (as opposed to the typical 10-year loan), which generally will lower regular payments. These consolidators calculate the interest rate by rounding up to the nearest eighth of a percent the weighted average of the rates on all their outstanding loans. There's an 8.25% cap.

Interest-rate differentials among the various loan consolidators stem mostly from their application of "borrower benefits," including interest-rate or principal deductions awarded for things like on-time payments and auto-debits.

Consolidation loans can save money, but they're not necessarily a panacea. True, you may be able to lower your monthly payment, but by lengthening the maturity of the loan, you'll ultimately pay more because of the added interest. A calculator on FinAid, www.finaid.org, can help you determine whether you'll benefit. The site offers a good primer on student loans.

"Their original purpose was as a tool for the federal government to mitigate default risk," says Kevin Walker, co-founder and CEO of SimpleTuition, which recently launched Consolidation Comparison.com (www.consolidationcomparison.com). "But it's become a product category of its own."

SimpleTuition's goal was to make the consolidation-comparison process as easy as going to a travel site and making a flight reservation. It aimed to bring more transparency to the financial decision-making process for students and parents.

At that, it has succeeded: ConsolidationComparison.com couldn't be simpler, though it could be more comprehensive: It reflects only about a third of the lenders available. Still, it offers a good cross-section for a new site. Select the types of loans you have and enter their balance and rate. Then designate your state and your school's location and answer a few other questions. A table of lenders appears, with sortable columns for monthly payment, total cost of loan, and APR (annual percentage rate.) Click on a link for more thorough loan information, or to apply (some lenders prefer phone calls). APRs on the search we did for a $40,000 balance ranged from 3.47% (total cost: $57,507 on 237 payments, from NextStudent, www.nextstudent.com) to 5.09% (total cost: $69,318 on 286 payments, from the U.S. Department of Education, www.ed.gov).

Regardless of whether you use ConsolidationComparison.com to start your search, you can go straight to the Websites of lenders offering consolidation loans. A good place to start is the Sallie Mae site (www.salliemae.com). The company (ticker: SLM), which claims to be the country's biggest student lender with 10 million borrowers, began as a government-sponsored entity, but has since privatized. Rates for the Sallie Mae Smart Loan Consolidation Account generally range from 4.75% to 6.125%. Rates on other loans Sallie Mae offers are also posted at the site.

One of the best rates was at Educational Loan Company (www.educationalloancompany.com): 3% for borrowers with more than $20,000 in loans who make the first 24 monthly payments on time and have their payments withdrawn from a bank account. Other borrowers you should consider include Nelnet (www.nelnet.net); StudentLoanConsolidator (www.studentloanconsolidator.com); StudentLoanXpress (www.mycaploan.com); and NextStudent, which claims a 2.75% rate on some loans. The Department of Education offers consolidation loans and other good resources at its site, loanconsolidation.ed.gov.