Once a student gets a student loan consolidation, they are expected to make payments on their student loans every month, and to make them on time. When going through the student loan consolidation process, a student has a number of options of payment plans that they can choose from to pay back their student loans. Most students will stay with the standard repayment plan in which the loan payments stay the same for the entirety of the loan. The advantage of this type of payment plan is that the payments will never change, which helps a person to plan out their budget every month. Some students will opt for the graduated repayment plan, which has initial low monthly payments. This helps the student to still work on paying back their student loans while looking for a job. After a given amount of time, the monthly payments will increase, and continue to increase from there on out. If a student falls behind on their student loan payments, their student loan becomes a defaulted student loan. This puts their payments on hold until they can get current on their student loans. Even after they are able to catch up on their student loans, the default student loan is on their credit report. This will hurt them in any future dealings.

The repayment options that a person can choose from in paying back their student loans will vary in advantages and disadvantages for each person. If someone has a job lined up for when they graduate and will have enough money right off the bat to make student loan debt payments, they should stick to the standard repayment option, because they can get their loans paid off quicker, and they will not have to worry about their payments increasing after a while. However, most students do not have a job or enough money to make that high a payment each month. In those cases, the graduated repayment option is best, because they can still work on paying off their student loan debt, but they can make low payments until a job is found. After a given amount of time, the payments will increase, so the student should be aware of when the payments will increase. Also, a student with graduated repayment should be aware that while they have low payments each month, they are also collecting more interest on the remaining balance. Therefore, that student will be paying more interest in total on their student loans. However, sometimes it is worth it to have the initial low payments.

If a student is unable to keep up with their student loan payments, they will likely get a defaulted student loan. When this happens, the student loan company will put the student's account on hold until they are able to catch up on their payments. A default student loan will affect a person's credit report, which might hinder their chances of low interest rates when they go to apply for a mortgage or a loan. Defaulted student loans are hard to clear off of the record, but it can be managed. Before a student gets a defaulted student loan, they should notify the student loan company if there are going to be any late payments.