How a college’s borrowers actually repaid

Where the published rates fall

To place one college’s figure, here is the spread of every published figure for the same cohort: the quarter of colleges with the lowest rates sits below the first value, half sit below the middle value, and a quarter sit above the third. A college page names which of those four bands its rate falls in. Nothing here ranks a college.

Status two years into repayment — 2016–17 and 2017–18 entry cohorts (2019–20 file)

Counts differ by status because smaller cohorts’ shares are published as ranges, which no distribution can include. These statuses were read during the federal payment pause (March 13, 2020 to September 30, 2023), when no payment was due. Shares in default, delinquent or making progress are not comparable with earlier cohorts.

Median federal debt of graduates — FY2020 and FY2021 pooled cohorts

What these figures are

Every figure comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard institution-level data, read through its API one data year at a time, and is shown with the Scorecard field it came from. The three families report three different cohorts, which is why each carries its own cohort year rather than the net-price year:

• Three-year cohort default rate.The share of a college’s borrowers who entered repayment on Direct or FFEL loans in one federal fiscal year and defaulted by the end of the second following fiscal year, as calculated by Federal Student Aid (fields repayment.3_yr_default_rate and its borrower count repayment.3_yr_default_rate_denom). The 2024–25 Scorecard file carries the FY2022 cohort.
• Repayment status at one, two and four years. Where undergraduate federal-loan borrowers stood one, two or four years after entering repayment, as eight shares that sum to the published borrower count: paid in full, making progress, not making progress, deferment, forbearance, delinquent, default and discharged (the repayment.N_yr_bb_fed_repayment.ug.* family, two pooled entry cohorts per figure). The Department published the two-year statuses last in its 2019–20 file; no newer cohort exists yet.
• Median debt of completers and the median monthly payment it implies on a standard 10-year plan (aid.median_debt.completers.overall and aid.median_debt.completers.monthly_payments), for two pooled fiscal-year cohorts of students who completed.

Scope & limitations

• Federal loans only. Direct Loan and FFEL borrowers who entered repayment in that cohort; private loans and Parent PLUS are outside these figures.
• Institution level, not program level.One figure per college, pooling every program; the Scorecard’s field-of-study figures are not shown here.
• Suppressed and coarsened cells.The Department withholds a cell when too few borrowers are behind it, and publishes smaller cohorts’ status shares as ranges. A withheld figure is printed as not published; a range is printed as a range. Nothing is estimated and no missing figure is shown as zero.
• The payment pause. This cohort's three-year window fell inside the federal payment pause (March 13, 2020 to September 30, 2023) and the on-ramp year after it, during which no borrower with a Department-held loan entered default. The rate is near zero by construction, not a sign the college's borrowers repaid. Every affected figure carries that label beside it; none is dropped, because the Department published it.
• Bands, not ranks.A default rate is a reputational figure about an institution’s borrowers, the cohorts are often small, and the pause broke the series. No page on this site lists, ranks or maps colleges by any of these rates; the only comparison offered is which quarter of the published distribution a figure sits in.
• Historical by design. The newest default-rate cohort trails the calendar by about two years; the status and debt cohorts are older still.

Informational only — official federal figures about a college’s past borrowers, not an offer of aid, a measure of a college’s quality, a prediction of what any student will owe, or professional advice.

Sources

U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard institution-level data and data dictionary (repayment and aid fields, drawn from Federal Student Aid and NSLDS). Federal Student Aid, National Default Rate Briefing for FY 2022 Official Cohort Default Rates and the FY 2019, FY 2020 and FY 2021 briefings, for the cohort windows and the statement that no borrower with a Department-held loan entered default during the payment pause that began March 13, 2020.

Last reviewed: October 2026