can someone tell me what factors the credit report companies use to calculate a credit score?

There are a number of factors that go into calculating your credit score. How many open lines of revolving credit you have; how many high balance accounts you have open; how many times any one of your accounts have been paid late by 60 days or more; the type of debt you have. There are such things as good debt and bad debt. Generally speaking, good debt are things like a home mortgage, student loans, and things of this nature. Bad debt is generally consider a number of high balance unsecured accounts. If they have an idea of what you income is, then they consider your debt to income ratio, the higher the ratio the lower the credit. Even how long an account has been open. A long history on an credit account, assuming no or very few paymetns late, over a long number of years is very good. New open accounts reduce your credit score. Also, the number of times that companies review your credit histroy is recorded. The more inquiries you have, the lower you score is going to be. Sometimes these inquiries are not solicited by you and you can have them removed to boost you score a bit. But, there are a number of factors that go into your credit rating. This is an handfull of them, and probably some of the more important ones.