Had you taken on college loans? I know that's how I established my credit and, once I had that in my history, they were all to happy to give me a card with an absurd limit (for me, at the time, with only a work-study job) with little more than my name and SSN.
It seems strange that taking on a ton of unsecured debt would make creditors think it's more likely that you'll be able to pay off even more unsecured debt, but that seems to be how the system works, or at least worked two decades ago when I was in school. Perhaps the emergence of for-profit colleges that don't really offer their graduates the kind of post-schooling opportunities that traditional colleges do has changed the way that college loans are perceived since they no longer reliably predict future earnings the way they used to.
It seems strange that taking on a ton of unsecured debt would make creditors think it's more likely that you'll be able to pay off even more unsecured debt, but that seems to be how the system works, or at least worked two decades ago when I was in school. Perhaps the emergence of for-profit colleges that don't really offer their graduates the kind of post-schooling opportunities that traditional colleges do has changed the way that college loans are perceived since they no longer reliably predict future earnings the way they used to.