Credit scoring is a new phenomenon that seems to be taking the industry by storm. The credit agencies have devised mathematical formulas to score people's credit. Each of the three credit reporting agencies has their own formula and resulting score, which sometimes differ substantially. The resulting number is starting to determine whether you are eligible for a loan or not. In some cases, the scoring is beneficial (the score seems higher than the credit warrants), in some cases quite the opposite. For now, there are still lenders that are not credit score driven so in essence there is an opportunity to get a better loan in some cases (use surprisingly high score to get loan from score driven lender, go with non-score driven lender in the opposite case), but I do not know how long this will last.