The fact that your collections are fairly new may be what's holding you back. Yes, as they age, they will have less of an impact. All of my collections and charge-offs are from 2011, and majority of them stopped updating monthly in 2013-2014. Because you are paying on the medical collections, I would assume they are updating your report to show a positive monthly payment. If they are still updating every month to show non-payment, it's not helping your situation and wouldn't help you in getting a mortgage either because your reports are showing recent negative payment history. You mentioned you cannot pull your reports right now. My advice would be to get a CreditKarma account, which is free. Ignore the score since it's a Vantage Score, but it will provide you weekly updates with your Transunion and Equifax accounts so you can see the activity there. CreditCheckTotal is another vendor that you could use. Sign up with them and take advantage of the free trial. Cancel your membership and sign up again when you need it.
Don't put too much weight on the student loans unless you're in a position to pay them off. That's a matter of it being "it is what it is". For the AU situation, my lender actually advised my husband to add me to his card.
