How Should an Undergrad Go About Building an Artificially High FICO Score

Larry Chiang is an instructional humorist and has a JBA (Jedi in Business Administration). He will have you street savvy by Saturday. After a Harvard Business School event, they wrote: “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School“. He spoke at a BASES event, did Q&A via text message and now teaches us what the underbelly of credit looks like in, “How Should an Undergrad Go About Building an Artificially High FICO Score“.

By Larry Chiang

I remember learning credit tips from my mentor, Gerri Detweiler. She is a credit expert. I took what I learned from her and added more in the past 7.9 years here at Duck9

These are the four components to how a Stanford engineering undergrad can build their FICO credit score:
(1) the pre-credit prep,
(2) peppering positive information,
(3) adding in more positive information into the FICO grid and
(4) confirming that the information went into the FICO grid (https://www.duck9.com/stanford-engineering/secret-way-for-cs-majors-to-run-a-credit-report-without-a-trace/).

If five or more people voted this genius answer up on Quora, Ill expand this answer but I’ll be a ducks butt if I am going to take 30minutes to answer this only to get zero votes and a Quora bully saying bad things about me anonymously.

[UPDATE: there are over a dozen ‘upvotes’ as of May 8, 2017]
Ok, thx for the voting. HERE is an expansion of what I mean

(1) the pre-credit prep,

Get a power bill in your name before you apply for credit.

You do not want to get turned down for credit, so do not apply cold. Ideally, you will have a family power bill in your name or a family cell phone bill in your name. Do not cold-apply for credit. Do not get a credit card co-signed.

(2) peppering positive information,

You should engineer up a high FICO credit score as a college student. By engineer, I mean pepper the credit reporting agencies with positive information. Just like inflating your GPA with 24 A’s, you can inflate your FICO score with 24 1s (1s are ontime payments.

I say pepper with positive information, but I really mean SLEDGEHammer in positive information. The public is out there hopiing for good credit and getting mentored via urban legends. Me and the people I mentor get our information from my credit mentor, Gerri Detweiler. She wrote: “The Ultimate Credit Handbook”.

(3) adding in more positive information into the FICO grid and

Yes, make sure you charge $20 every month and log-in twice per month to pay it early and very much on time. I truly recommend doing what I do and logging in every thursday to pay it on time.

You basically want to turn your credit card that is associated to your social security number into a debit card. In short, don’t use a debit card but get a credit card that ties to you and your social security number. Then make sure you pay a super SMALL amount EVERY EFFEN MONTH. charging zero and paying zero is way different from charging $15-20 and paying it on-time.

(4) confirming that the information went into the FICO grid

After you get a good grade in Engineering 145, you want to make sure that Professor Kosnik passes your ‘A+’ in Stanford engineering to the registrar’s office. Right?!

Well, in the credit industry world, crap gets lost all the time. It is a world based on scraps of paper getting mailed to and fro’. Confirm that the positive info you peppered into your credit file actually went into your Experian Equifax and Trans Union

I’d use a paper form to fill out
https://www.duck9.com/credit-secrets/free-credit-reports-run-no-trace-no-catches-duck9/

If you do it online, then there is a crap ton more hoops to jump thru. If you doubt my expert testimony on this, see for yourself: www.annualcreditreport.com