Credit cards

College Life
1

<p>Ok if I apply fir a card and it fails… What happens? Will it look super bad on my credit report. I am very careful so I’m certain I will have a high credit score after a few years but the denied credit card request will be on my report. Does that look super bad?</p>

2

<p>Moonnite,</p>

<p>Your credit report does not list what credit cards you have been accepted or denied for. Instead, it has a section for credit inquiries. Each time you apply for a credit card that company will pull your credit report and it will show up as a credit inquiry. </p>

<p>Without getting into too many specifics about how credit scoring works, if you have no credit, this won’t hurt you as you have no credit score to start with. You need 6 months of payment history in order for a FICO credit score to be generated. </p>

<p>Logically speaking though, if you apply for a credit card and other companies do not see any New Accounts along with that inquiry, they can safely assume you were denied. This plays a very small part (if any) in whether or not a company decides to accept or deny you.</p>

<p>Here are the factors that credit companies look at when reviewing your application for credit:
*Payment history (very important) - do you have a good history of on time payments?
*Credit Utilization (very important) - are you maxed out on your current lines of credit?
*Number of Accounts with a Balance
*New credit (Very important) - how many new credit accounts have you opened recently?
*Length of history (important) - how long have you had credit
*Types of credit (not very important) - car loans, credit cards, mortgage, etc.</p>

<p>Keep in mind that New Credit is perhaps the single most important factor when a company decides to lend you credit or not, and that they also care about how many accounts with a balance you have. </p>

<p>That’s probably more than you asked for, but if you’re still confused feel free to ask for clarification.</p>

3

<p>it won’t dramatically drop. if you were denied, you can check your report for free and see how it was affected.</p>