I recently got admitted into an Executive MBA program at a good school. The cost of the program is $100,000 but I need a student loan of about $55,000 to $60,000. I can fund the rest starting next year.
My credit card score is quite low. My FICO scores are around 650. The biggest concern on FICO Score 8 Ingredients on MyFICO was my current credit card utilization (mentioned below). Below is a summary of my current debt/loans:
Debt to Income Ratio: My current debt to income ratio is around 22% (including annual bonus) and 28% (excluding bonus).
Mortgage: $275,000. I bought a house last year with 5% down and I've been making regular payments on time. No late payments.
Credit Card: $11,500 current balance on $12,000 limit. This credit card is 5 years old & is my only credit card. After buying the house, I did some renovations & purchasing and I ended up spending more on my credit card than I originally planned for. I've been making 3x to 5x the minimum payments to bring the balance down (I had some unexpected purchases last month which added more balance back). Never had a late payment.
I also got the credit card company to increase the balance to $16,000 last night. Furthermore, I plan to bring down my balance to less than $9000 by end of June. So perhaps by end of June, the utilization will be $8,500/$16000. I understand it's not enough.
Student Loans: $25,000 on two current student loans (one from undergrad and another one from grad). Both are more than 5 years old private student loans. I pay a little additional every month towards the principal. Never had a late payment.
Note on private student loan: The reason why I'm interested in private student loan is because I'm not eligible for Federal student loans (I'm on a visa). And unfortunately, I don't have a co-signer. Yeah it's hard.
Using this information, how likely will I get approved (or perhaps rejected) for a private student loan? The places where I am thinking of applying for student loans are - Discover Student Loans' MBA Loan and Sallie Mae's private educational loans. But I'm afraid to give a call to them and start the application process becuase I feel they will reject me right away. So I want to wait couple more months before applying, giving me a little more time to bring down my CC payments and hopefully raise the score.
I would be happy to hear your wisdom and see what's the best approach.
