By Jon Cook

(Reuters) – Sue Khim was in her third year of medical school, $50,000 in debt and wondering if she would ever dig herself out.

Instead of simply making the minimum monthly payments on her student loans, Khim scoured the Web to find banks that offered better interest rates. The discrepancies shocked her, with rates varying from 11 percent to 6 percent.

“The comparison shopping took forever and it was really painful,” said Khim, noting the best rates, most often offered by credit unions, were hidden while the less consumer-friendly terms from major lenders were more front and center. “Students are, many times, overpaying for loans, because the info to compare their options isn’t available to them.”

Khim, who describes the situation as a “college affordability crisis,” wanted to ease the pain for other students and dropped out of school to turn her idea into Chicago-based startup Alltuition (www.alltuition.com). The site, which originally launched as EduLender in July 2010, boasts the largest database of student loans in the U.S., said Khim. Users are able to track rates, fees and terms for hundreds of lenders and compare them to help students choose the best fit.

The recent name change was made because Khim felt EduLender was too limiting and she wanted something that would better showcase the platform’s offering as “a really comprehensive kind of encyclopedic-type of process” that she added, “lets you customize your complete tuition costs.”

Khim coded the original platform herself and entered it into a business-plan competition at the University of Chicago. She didn’t win, but got a lot of positive reaction, including some from local investors that ultimately fell through. Dejected, Khim was forced to put the venture on the backburner while she worked a part-time job to support her parents and younger brother and programed on the side as a freelancer.