 TITLE: Personal Loan Interest Rates and APRs: What’s the Difference? CONTENT: How to Get a Great APR on a Personal Loan\n-----------------------------------------\nThe factors that determine the APR on a personal loan are similar to those used in all lending decisions. Lenders typically consider your credit report, credit score, employment history and income before extending a loan offer.\nOften, lenders use credit scores to help decide which applications warrant full consideration—ruling out candidates whose scores don't meet a threshold for a particular loan. Applicants with lower credit scores may not even be considered for the loans with the best available APRs.\nTo get the best loan terms available to you, it can be worthwhile to take a few preliminary steps before you apply for a personal loan:\n*   Review your credit reports, including the one from Experian, for accuracy and submit any corrections to the national credit bureaus (Experian, TransUnion and Equifax).\n*   Check your credit score and take steps to improve it, including:\n*   **Make sure to pay your bills on time.** Every month, without fail. Missing just one payment hurts your credit score more than any other single credit decision you can make.\n*   **Pay down your debts.** High balances, especially those that exceed about 30% of your credit card borrowing limit, can have a negative effect on your credit score.\n*   **Avoid applying for credit too often.** Each time you apply for a loan or credit card, the lender checks your credit through a process known as a hard inquiry, which typically causes a temporary dip in your credit scores. Your scores usually rebound within the space of a few months as long as you keep up with your payments, but they don't have time to recover if you apply for multiple loans in short succession.\n    An important exception to this is when you comparison-shop for loans. To encourage you to apply to multiple lenders when seeking a car loan or mortgage, credit scoring systems treat multiple applications for loans of the type and amount as a single event, which only lowers your score once.\n*   Apply to multiple lenders and shop carefully for the best deal. END