Credit score after student loan rehabilitation

[Anonymous]

I've been working on my credit, meticulously. My score was finally above 700, and my goal to get a mortgage was in reach. I had defaulted student loans which I've been rehabilitating, I got some crappy credit cards (Fingerhut, cap one...) And I just paid and paid. Finally, my student loan was taken out of default! That part of my credit journey took 10 months! But guess what? Now those old defaulted loan amounts show up on my debt ratio, so my debt amount jumped from $1,200 to over 11k. My good credit just plummeted by 51 points. I should have just left the student loans in default! They were old enough! What should I do now? Is this really as bad as it feels? Did I make a mistake?

[calyx]

First, no it's not that bad, I promise.   Those loans would not have gone away and it's best that you got this taken care of, even though it kind of sucks.   DTI is definitely going to be affected by your loan payment, but if the loan payments are too high, call to ask about an income based repayment plan (if you aren't already on one).
You would have not gotten a mortgage with a defaulted federal loan, it's about more than scores.

So, I have a few questions, if you don't mind:
1.   Where are you getting your score? 
2.   Did you have an installment loan already on your report (mortgage, auto, personal)

3.   Have these loans finished reporting?  As in - they default has been removed and they're showing as open and being paid?
3b:  Did they remove or keep the lates that led to the default?

Generally, scores increase because there's a good, old, positive tradeline on your account (reporting as installed).  Having a high debt is not necessarily going to give you any problems, as long as your DTI (debt to income ratio) is OK.   My debt jumped from 0 to 30k to 55k, and they didn't negatively impact me, except for the new tradelines because my revolving credit utilization stayed the same.  Installment isn't lumped in with revolvers as far as utilization is concerned.

[Anonymous]

Firstly, I get my credit score from 2 sources; Creditwise (from my Cap one cc- it's vantage, so it's always a bit higher), and I pay for the Experian credit monitoring.
I only have credit cards at this point, although I will likely have an auto loan within the next day or two. So, no current installment loans.
My student loan payments are very low and manageable now. They JUST got removed from default status, and are being shown as open and being paid.
Not sure how to answer the other part.. but THANK YOU for your response!!

[calyx]

You really shouldn't have gotten a drop from the account.   Was the point drop on Creditwise or Experian.
You would have gotten points for credit mix for having an installment loan (student loans count!)

Maybe give it a month or two to shake out?  When my accounts came current, it took a little time.
If you look at the account history in Experian it should show you if there are lates.

This is from my accounts - I went to my "credit report" and clicked on the name of the lender, and this popped down:

You can see that all of may payments are ontime.  The grays are "no data" and I think that lates are red or yellow (sorry, I don't have any right now to show).    If the lates are still showing for you, you could write a goodwill letter to the lender asking them to remove that data (the late payments) for you.  Some will do it, though not all will.

Student loan servicers are notoriously laggy about reporting all of their information.  It took months for my credit report to get straightened out when I consolidated, and I had issues with my rehab as well.

Good luck!