Hello myFICO! I just registered because I have been reading here quite a bit over the last few weeks, and was just approved for my first credit card.
I am a graduate student making a glorious $20k a year. I'm in my late twenties and hope to someday, sooner rather than later, have a down payment and qualify for a home loan that does not suck. I have $11K of student loans from college that I've been paying back for about 6 years, though all but 1 are in deferment. I have a 30 day on that one from 2007 which I plan to try to get removed.
I began my adventures in credit cards, clumsily, a few weeks ago. I applied for a BCP. I had no idea about anything. I didn't know what FICO stood for and certainly had never been to this forum. The Blue Cash Preferred just seemed like a good fit for me and I ran the numbers and I'd come out ahead, even with the anual fee, over the BCE--all the while incentivising the purchase of groceries over retaurant food. I had it all figured out; I was a naive little man.
So now, few weeks but many read myFICO posts later, I realize that creditors certainly take their money seriously, and despite the fact that I am trusted with the secrets of the universe and the ability to do mathematics the econ "gurus" at AmEx can only dream of--I should probably improve my credit (+cashflow?) before applying for such fancy cards.
And here I am, proud owner of a Discover More student with a $1500 CL. I also applied for a Citi Forward card (actually about a week earlier) but apparently they haven't even pulled my credit yet. Next up is the Zync (we need to establish a relationship, AmEx, I don't feel like your really understand me) and then I'm off to the garden.
The guy at Citi (I applied in a bank) said after I told him my FAKOs that I "actually had a pretty good score for someone with effectively no credit."
CK: 669; Quizzle 660; CreditSesame: 721(?); Ex (AmEx HP): 676
We'll see where they go once the card is on the books! Thanks for talking about this on the internet so that I can stop renting some day.
Starting Score: Ex 676 (AmEx 7/26/2012)
hello, after reading your brief post it seems like you are on a good start. 
remember the soonest you can apply for another american express card after denial is 30 days, but you should wait for the letter of explanation as to why you were denied so you can address those points!
@iMacDrew wrote:hello, after reading your brief post it seems like you are on a good start.
not much to address is my guess. Just too hard a card given his credit profile. Op seems to have good plan.
LIMITS IN CARD DESCRIPTIONS
iMacDrew--thanks for the response. I have the explanation letter.
It lists:
Number of accounts with delinquency (guilty for the 30 day in 2007)
Lack of recent revolving account information (guilty)
Proportion of loan balances to loan amounts is too high (11k/16k)
Lack of recent bank/national revolving information (guilty)
If we take the first thing is most important rule, I should definitely try to get that 30 day off of there. I imagine it's compounded quite a bit by the whole you-don't-even-have-a-credit-card thing. I can't do much about the loan balances and will be paying an array of subsidized stafford percentages when they go out of deferment when/if I graduate, so it doesn't make too much sense to pay them off early.
EDIT: But as replied--it's just too hard a card given my current credit profile--so I'm going to leave that card as a goal for somewhere down the road
I agree with James hang on for at least 6 months and you should golden for AMEX.
Good luck! For what its worth; discover was my first card too. It has grown over time and now holds a permanent place in my collection. Treat it well
FICO 9: 
Filed Chapter 13 on 6/1/2017 after job loss. Discharged 6/1/2022.
Goal: Gardening!
Filed Chapter 13 on 6/1/2017 after job loss. Discharged 6/1/2022.
Goal: Gardening!
Update:
I was denied the Citi Forward. I told the bank that I wanted to apply for the Citi Forward Student--but apparently they apped me for the regular Citi Forward. So there's one HP to get chalked up to a learning experience: don't apply in the bank! They were quite friendly and appeared to know what they were doing but I guess not. I even explicitly said at one point, "this is the student card, right?" and was given an affirmative answer.
The rejection also says my Experian score is 0627--which means I dropped 50 points from two hard pulls. This makes me even happier that the current HP was basically a total waste. Thanks Citi!
I spoke with a very nice analyst on the phone who said that I might still have a chance if I get that one deliquency taken off of my report. She said that all they see is the "Number of accounts with delinquency" and not the report itself implying that they didn't know it was just a single 30 day from 5 years ago--but also that if I sent them the report as it currently stands, it would certainly still be denied. Mildly conflicting, but the moral is that my next step is to get that deliquency off of my report. She said all I have to do is call Experian and they'll take care of it.
So I called Experian and after some (lots of) robot navigation I found a human being who said that absolutely and under no circumstances do they just take stuff off of a report because it's old and you've been paying on time--that they only do it if it's incorrect. This is, of course, what you read a lot on the message boards, but I figured the analyst might know more than the boards--oh well! So I'll go with what the internet says and call my creditor, who, of course, has no phone number listed on the credit report. I've now tracked down the correct number--a person who was apparently in a meeting the last time I called. To be continued I guess.
tl; dr. Don't app in the bank; hard pulls of a thin folder do fun/volatile things to your score; nice people don't always know what they're talking about
(or I could just sit on the Discover card and do more fun things with my life until the 30 day falls off December 2013)
Edit: Just got my approval letter from Discover and it says my TU score is 725. ~100 point spread on my FICOs!