Strategy Session

I am new to this group. I have been reading posts for a few hours now. This group is fantastic.

I made some credit blunders during my undergraduate career. I am going to begin my last year of grad school in the fall. With this comes job searching. I am concerned that my credit blunders will negativley affect my employment chances with some companies. Last week I ordered a 3-1 credit report online. I was surprised that my credit wasn't as bad as I thought, but it is still not good enough for potential employers (IMHO).

On the credit report is a charged off MBNA account. All 3 agencies have different numbers reported as the balance but it is in the neighborhood of $1800-$2200. There are some unpaid utilities still in collection. They resulted from me moving out of an apartment and not switching name on the bill. I was screwed by roomates.

I have been strateizing for the past week and have developed a preliminary cleaning strategerey along with some questions.

You can see an edited version of the negative items at http://home.ma.rr.com/cinfo/cr_all.htm (account nos and and other info slightly disguised.)


My overall stategery:
MBNA
The MBNA charge offs have been there for over 2 years. From what I read this will be tougher for verfication/validation because of records being discarded or archived beyond recovery. So I am going to start disputing MBNA.

Utilities in collection:
Dispute them all. I have a good hunch that some are unverifyable. The collection agencies have never contacted me. If they are verfied successfuly then I will offer full payment in exchange for removal of tradelines from all 3 CRAs. The balances are relatively small. $100-$300.

My questions:
MBNA
As for the MBNA trade lines should I begin disputing with MBNA or the CRAs? I have been reading the posts and I have read mixed results.

Is MBNA legally bound to reply to a validation? (I have read mixed responses. Most say yes. I am aware that there is a difference between verification and validation. But I am not sure when they apply.)

Utilities in collection:
Should I start with the CA or CRAs?

If verification is successful should I offer full payment in removal of trade line or verify again.

Finally:
As it works out, if I dispute every thing at once I will have 3 disputes at once with all the CRAs? Is this too many?

Here are my current scores
TU: 612
EQU: 610
EXP: 609

--Delgato