If you think that you cannot get a bad credit student loan, think again. It is true that finding a student loan with excellent interest rates is easier if one has a great credit score, a bad credit student loan is possible.
For instance, the most popular government loan, the Stafford loan, assumes that most applicants will be going to college straight from high school, and will not have a credit rating at all. As a result, Stafford loans don't even consider the credit rating a factor when it comes to qualifications. The same holds true for Perkins loans, which are special federal loans designated for the neediest students. The only reason bad credit would interfere with these kinds of student loans are if you have defaulted on a federal student loan in the past.
A bad credit student loan is also possible if your parents have better credit than you do. In this case, a PLUS loan, which is a type of loan that is granted to parents and not to the student, might be the way to go. The US Department of Education student loans, like the Stafford and Perkins loans, assume that the parents will pay for a certain amount of their children's schooling; a PLUS loan is intended to cover the amount that the parent is obligated to contribute toward college costs.
Federal funding is a good choice for a bad credit student loan because they are specifically designed to help make college more accessible to more people; therefore, their requirements are much looser than those of most private lending institutions. However, if you are unable to secure an US Department of Education student loan, you may have to turn to private loans. If you are planning to graduate in a field with a high earnings potential, such as law or medicine, you might have a better chance of receiving a bad credit student loan from a private lender.