My credit score is 1600, just like my SAT.

 

The credit bureaus have NO CLUE of your income or what type of loan you are applying for. After the fact the creditor MIGHT choose to report that credit resulted from the credit pull and they MIGHT report your credit limit and/or your present balance, but they don't have to report any of that.

Dude, you are right that the CREDITOR takes into consideration all those things but the bureau has no access to that information. Your debt to income ratio has NO impact whatsoever upon your credit score, they don't even have that information.

Do you report your income and all the information on the loans you are applying for to the credit bureaus?

Does your employer report your income? Do you think IRS does? Then how would they know your income?

All the bureau knows about you is what you see on your report. Have you heard of the Privacy Act? No one can even give that info to the bureaus.

They base your credit score on how much credit you have (vs national norms), your pay history (they have no idea if you pay extra, pay a loan off early, or pay it off monthly), and your present reported balance (months old information) as compared to your high credit limit.

With the advent of credit scores people have latched onto that as THE main consideration in loan approval but, as in a mortgage loan, it is way less than half the approval process. A certain score might be your ticket to a certain loan type (as in a no income loan) but once you have met the magic credit score for the loan type you are requesting the stability factors of $$$, address history , job history and income/debt ratios are much more important!

 

That was a rude awakening for me at 17. I was like WTF, my checking account has done NOTHING to improve my credit (in fact, I had NO credit at all). I went to the bank and got a credit card (low limit, pay it off every month), and a $1000 loan against my savings account (which I paid off in exactly one year). The funny thing is, I had to do nothing for the first 11 months regarding the loan, it's all autodrafted. Now my score is between 750 and 850 at 22 years old.

I just get nervous when I check it, because I feel like they're going to lower the score accidentally because I checked the report.

 

It shouldn't lower the score when you check it.

It also shouldn't lower your score when your creditor rechecks it.

It also should not lower your score when the credit bureau checks it to when they are searching for people that meet a certain credit criteria so they can sell you name and info to spammers.

Notice the word sell comes up a lot. The credit bureaus make a TON of money pedalling your information.

As a matter of fact, that's the simplified story of how credit scoring came about in the first place. They needed a way to make $$$ selling names. So they came up with a way to rank your credit.

Lawsuits by the NAACP caused Congress to look into credit practices and the credit SELLING system was standardized as a way to ensure people weren't being turned down due to anything but past credit history.