Nurse Corps and written off debt

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I have applied for the 2018-2019 Nurse Corps Scholarship program and just read the part in the application guide that any written off debt will make you ineligible for this award? I have one closed credit card account for $1200 that I got when I was 19 and didn't know what I was doing. I've paid everything on time since then and never knew how to take care of it so I just left it alone. Now I find out it my affect my application and apparently there is a way to pay off closed accounts?

Does anyone have any experience with this? Been rejected based on credit or accepted even with closed accounts? I am more than willing to pay this off but now I'm worried that by the time is goes through on my credit score it will be too late and I'll already have been rejected because of it.

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Once any debt is charged off, the entry on your credit report remains for a period of 7 years. If you contact the company and pay them today the only thing that would change on your credit report would be that the amount owed would change to reflect $0. (The amount owed could already be $0 if they have sold the debt to any other company.)

According to the guidelines of the Nurse Corps program, a default on any federal debt would automatically disqualify a candidate from receiving assistance. However, the application guidelines do state that any defaulted debt federal and/or non-federal MAY be considered for selection of award.

Unfortunately, they receive many more applications every year from more candidates then they can even hope to award. Everyone that reaches the stage of consideration of an award gets their credit pulled and reviewed. If there are candidates with everything equal, they will chose someone with no credit defaults over anyone that does have a credit blemish. There are numerous internet threads running as early as 2014 that I found that discuss that people have been denied simply based on defaulted credit cards, cell phone bills, electric bills, medical bills, etc.

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