In an effort to better understand student loan default behavior at Texas A&M University (TAMU), the research staff at TG, at the request of TAMU, conducted a study of the relationship between loan default, on the one hand, and many student and borrower characteristics, on the other hand. The study examines the default behavior of 12,776 undergraduate borrowers who attended Texas A&M in College Station and who entered repayment on TG-guaranteed Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) loans during federal fiscal years 1997, 1998, and 1999. The study regards a borrower as being in default if the borrower defaulted within the fiscal year the borrower entered repayment or within the following fiscal year. Texas A&M staff supplied information describing high school coursework, SAT scores, college grade point average (GPA), length of attendance at TAMU, graduation status, amounts of financial aid received, financial need assessment, gender, marital status and many other aspects of students' backgrounds and college experiences. The study organizes these student and borrower characteristics into the following categories: Preparedness, Attendance Pattern, College Success, Financial Aid, Loan Briefing (Counseling), Demographics and Loan-Related Factors. This analysis will attempt to increase the understanding of the factors that are related to default at Texas A&M University. Hopefully, TAMU, TG and others will be able to use this better understanding of default behavior to identify at-risk groups of borrowers, craft intervention or default mitigation strategies, and allocate scarce default aversion resources to the situations in which they will have the greatest chances of making a difference. An explanation of the study variables is appended. (Contains a bibliography.)