The Recent Graduate’s Guide to Reading a Credit Report — and What to Watch Out For
If you’ve recently graduated from college or are about to, it’s a good time to review your credit report and find out where you stand.
This is especially true if you’re ready to start looking for a job, an apartment or just want to upgrade your student card to one with more rewards — your credit history could impact all of it.
Read on for our step-by-step guide on how to read your credit report and the red flags you should watch out for.
Table of contents
How to get a credit report
First, you need to know how to get a credit report. By law, you’re entitled to a free copy of your credit report weekly from each of the major credit bureaus. You can get these free reports from AnnualCreditReport.com.
Note that these don’t include your credit score. However, if your credit history is very brief, it’s possible you don’t have a score yet. If you already have some credit, here are some ways you can check your score:
- Check your bank’s online portal to see if they provide it for free
- Buy it from the credit bureaus themselves
- Buy it from FICO or VantageScore
How to read your credit report
Your credit report will have a different structure depending on the credit scoring bureau that issues it. Having said that, the major bureaus — Experian, Equifax and Transunion — will have roughly similar sections, as described below.
Personal information
The first section of your credit report will list your personal information. This information is gleaned from public records or from credit applications you might have filled out previously, and includes:
- Name
- Social security number
- Addresses
- Phone numbers
- Birth date
- Past and current employers
None of this really impacts your score; however, you should still check it carefully to make sure that the information reported pertains to you.
If you find details that don’t correspond to you — for example, a name or addresses you don’t recognize — it could indicate a mistake in reporting or a sign of identity theft. If so, it’s important to investigate further by checking the rest of the report for accounts that don’t belong to you.
Credit cards and loan accounts
This section contains all the credit accounts your creditors are currently reporting to the bureaus.
If you are currently within the six-month grace period many student loans grant after graduation, they might not appear in this section yet. However, if you’re getting your credit report after that grace period ends, these loans will be reflected here.
Note that student loans typically consist of multiple loan accounts, so you might see each listed separately in this section.
If you’re an authorized user on a family member’s card or if you got a student card while at school, you’ll also see those accounts reported here.
Each account will include:
- Account type
- Outstanding balance
- Name and address of creditor
- Account opening and/or closing date
- Credit limit or loan amount
- Account status
- Payment history
Note that payment history is sometimes listed as a grid divided by months. If there are no numbers within that month, it means payments were made on time. If payments were late, then the grid will reflect how many days past due it was — whether it’s 30, 60, 90 or more. Sometimes late payments will be marked in red.
Negative accounts
The next section of the report will usually be the so-called negative accounts. This refers to accounts that were not paid as agreed, such as defaulted loans or bills that went to collections.
Accounts in collections — that is, debt that the original creditor has sold to a debt collection firm — will include the name of the collection agency, the original creditor, the date it was sent to collections and the balance owed.
Public records
While you’re unlikely to have public records if your credit and financial histories are brief, this section would typically reflect financial issues that required government action, such as bankruptcies.
Inquiries
The section on inquiries will reflect requests to obtain your credit report, whether the request was made by you or third parties.
Inquiries can be classified as hard or soft. Soft inquiries are those that are not made in connection with a formal application for credit — for example, when you request your own report or a lender checks it as part of a pre-qualification offer. These do not impact your credit score.
Hard inquiries, on the other hand, are inquiries made by lenders as part of a credit evaluation, such as when you apply for a credit card or a mortgage. These types of inquiries do impact your score, although not by much and only temporarily.
It’s important to remember that inquiries can only be reported for two years; if you see older inquiries there, you could dispute them with the credit bureaus.
Dispute errors
Under the provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), you have an extensive list of rights when it comes to your credit — chief among them is the right to a fair and accurate credit report. This means that, if you find incorrect information in your report or items that should not be reported anymore, you can dispute them with the credit bureaus. By law, they must investigate your claims within 30 days.
You can easily dispute information on each bureau’s website:
However, if you have several errors in your credit or find that you have been the victim of identity theft, you could consider hiring a reputable credit repair service that will do the work for you.