[Cylenchar]

As said above, the derogatory credit will stay on your report for 7 years, even if you close the accounts. I would STRONGLY advise against cancelling/closing all of the accounts with negative credit if you can avoid it, (with some being in collections, this may not be an option).

This is for three reasons: 1. the lenghth of time that accounts have been open will affect your score greatly. You want to be able to have an accounts with at least a six year history on them. (I know this sounds arbitrary, but I pulled my own credit report last week, and was told my score got dinged because the longest one I have is 5 years) 2. As you move farther away from the derogatories, as long as you remain current, your credit score will improve, and 3. you want a higher available balance. Ex: if you have 4 cards with $500 limit, 2 maxed out, 2 empty, so available balance is $1000, or 50%, if you closed the two with no balance, your available balance would drop to $0, or 100% maxed out.

As to your student loans, these will help your credit report as long as you remain current on them, because they will be counted from the date you took them out, not the date you begin payment, so the deferment can buy you some time and good credit.

As to what available balance you want to maintain, your score gets dinged by a significant amount for every 25% of available credit you use. So for tour two cards, you will want to remain below $125 on the one, and $100 on the other. HOWEVER Unless you cannot avoid it, do not charge more than you can pay off in a month.