 TITLE: Do Student Loans Help Build Credit? CONTENT: Factors That Affect Credit Scores\n---------------------------------\nMany factors play a role in determining your credit scores, and student loans can affect these in different ways. The primary scoring factors are often grouped into five categories:\n*   **Payment history**: A long history of on-time payments can help your credit scores, while a late payment can hurt your scores. The impact of late payments decreases over time.\n*   **Amount owed vs. loan balance**: The amount you owe on your student loans relative to the original balance can also affect your scores. As you pay down your student loans, the lower balance can help your scores.\n*   **Length of credit history**: A longer credit history, and a longer average age of accounts, could help your scores. Your student loan's account history can start when your loan is disbursed, even if you didn't start making payments until after you graduated.\n*   **Credit mix**: Having experience managing multiple types of debt can help your scores. Student loans are a type of installment loan, which has a fixed repayment period. Credit cards and lines of credit are part of the other type, revolving accounts, which have an indefinite repayment period.\n*   **Hard inquiries**: If you apply for private student loans, the resulting hard inquiries (when a lender asks to see your credit report) may hurt your credit scores. However, there's generally only a minor impact and your scores may rebound within a few months. END