Recent changes to the federal student loan program will affect student loan borrowing, repayment, and debt. Payments on student loans, which were suspended during the coronavirus pandemic, restarted in October 2023. A new repayment plan introduced in August 2023 will significantly reduce interest accrual and payments for certain borrowers. Lawmakers have expressed interest in changing federal measures of student loan repayment that are used to hold institutions accountable for the quality of education they provide. Understanding patterns of student loan repayment before payments were suspended during the pandemic can shed light on how those recent and proposed changes to the federal student loan program might affect students, educational institutions, and the federal budget. In this report, the Congressional Budget Office identified a representative sample of federal student loans taken out under the Federal Family Education Loan Program and the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program by undergraduate and graduate students whose repayment periods began between July 2009 and June 2013. This analysis was based primarily on an extract of data from the Department of Education's National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) and examined several measures including: (1) loan repayment; (2) loan default; (3) differences among repayment plans; (4) differences among borrowers; (5) differences among institutions and academic programs; and (6) short-run versus long-run outcomes.