Couple of PenFed card questions

[happypill]

I'm thinking about opening an account with PenFed and applying for a card.  I had a couple of questions based on stuff I've read around the myFICO forums.  Any advice or clarification would be appreciated.

1. Apply with a "clean" files?  A while back, there was some conjecture that PenFed had different buckets for their customers.  Customers who started with "clean" credit files got better offers down the road, while customers who had derogs wouldn't get such offers even when their profiles because much stronger.  Is that the case?  Would it be worth waiting for my file to be completely clean before applying (about a year for me), even if I think I might be approved now?

2. I heard PenFed uses the EQ NexGen score, what is that?  Does it correspond to any of the scores available from myFICO, like the Bankcard score or something like that?

Thanks.

[haiti222]

I am in an unusual situation where Equifax which Penfed pulls has two 3 year old inaccurate Student Loan Lates that have been removed from my other reports. It gives me a sixty to seventy point hit on most of the FICO models. Heavy utilization is the other zinger that I get on FICO (even though it is not that high). On the PenFed FICO, my Penfed score is around 710 out of 950 while my equifax score on other models is about 730/850. It is over penalizing me, and I have never gotten a pre-approval at that level.

[Anonymous]

When I applied for a checking, share and thrify account, I had a 22 month old ch7.  They denied me for a cc with the typical egyptian reason but it at least went to an underwriter (I was not the least bit surprised).  I applied for a car refinance a month later and was instantly approved online for just under $35k.

Currently my eq is at 664 but my ng2 score they use is 691 - so I'm thinking that after I passed the two year mark, my bk doesn't weigh as heavy on their scoring model.