This report aims to expand the window into federal student loan defaults beyond the event of default itself. It attempts to provide the most robust look to date of what happens to student loans "after a borrower defaults and why." Ultimately, this information should help policymakers evaluate the current set of policies related to default collections as well as pose new questions for researchers to explore. Note that this analysis focuses on government policies, such as exit pathways, fees, and interest related to default, as well as borrower repayment behavior. The report is divided into two sections. The first section analyzes a new data set from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) that tracks how the federal student loans of students who began college during the 2003-04 academic year perform over the following 13 years. The authors answer questions such as how long borrowers stay in default, what paths borrowers use to exit default, and how balances on defaulted loans change over time. The second section uses hypothetical borrower-level examples to simulate the effects of default--such as interest, fees, and penalties--that accrue on the loans. These examples are informed by the preceding data analysis and are based on extensive research into government policies for collecting defaulted loans and helping borrowers exit default. Overall, the findings suggest that the popular impressions of borrower outcomes after default, even among policymakers and researchers, are overly simplistic. There is no one typical path borrowers follow after defaulting on a federal student loan. While some borrowers stay in default for years, others leave default quickly. Some borrowers see their balances rise throughout their time in default, while others pay down their loans in full. These outcomes do not always correlate the way one might expect: A borrower who has exited default often has not repaid his loan (although he may eventually), and a borrower still in default is often making rapid progress toward fully repaying his debts.