That link that Newhis gave you will walk you through how to get a lot of points with an open installment loan that is mostly paid off. Gives you an overview, then an explanation for the scoring theory for why it works, then step by step instructions.
As far as your credit card balances, your goals should be to pay them all off. Completely. It sounds like you really want a fourth card, which is fine though you can have an extremely high score with just three. Since you want a fourth, you should make sure that two of the three cards are reporting $0 with one card reporting a small balance. AFTER all three cards are reporting the way you want, then you can apply for the 4th.
You also need to set up autopay for all your cards so that you will never EVER be late on a payment. Do you have any bad marks so far? (lates, chargeoffs, collections, judments, liens, anything like that?) If you have anything like that, we can hook you up with a community of people to help you.
If you have no derogs, here is the basic order in which I would tackle your stuff, if I were you.
(1) Pay off all your CC debt. Then use one card for small purchases. Keep your total utilization under 9% at all times. Keep most of your cards with a $0 balance. If a card has never been used even once, make sure you use it once.
(2) After paying off your CC debt, always be sure to pay your cards in full moving forward.
(3) Apply for the Alliant loan using the instructions in that link.
(4) After the loan is all set up and paid down (as per the guidance) you will see a bog boost from that.
(5) After that, you can apply for a fourth card if you want.
If you have derogs, then you will want a mentor or community to help you with those. You will see what progress you can make on those at the same time that you do 1-4. Hopefully you'll get some of them removed before you tackle applying for the fourth card (step 5).
I am not experienced with dealing with derogs but I can suggest some people here who can help.
Hope that is useful!
