The parties may still be going on for college graduates, but those student loan bills are coming due. And moves you make now could prove crucial to coming out on top.

Andrew Pentis, consumer lending analyst at Bankrate and a student loan counselor, says most people have a six-to-nine-month grace period after they leave school, where they don't have to start making payments. But he says if you can make a payment it will help in the long run. He says, "Obviously it is best if you can because that will help whittle down that interest that will accrue onto your balance. But if you need that six-to-nine-month period to maybe find your employment or start to fix up your budget that is a great way to start of onramp onto repayment."

Next, he says get to know your loans. Figure out where they are and set up an automatic payment. He says what you should not do... "the biggest mistake that we are seeing these days is just sort of holding out hope for mass forgiveness something like that coming out of Washington, D.C."

Overall, Pentis says staying organized and on top of it goes a long way and picking a strategy, "You can either choose an aggressive approach of repaying your loans, so forking over as much as you can, or you can be more strategically passive and what I mean by that is sort of, you might enroll in an income driven repayment plan to cap your monthly dues at a percentage of your income while you are hoping to increase your earnings, you might also pursue an existing forgiveness program, like public service loan forgiveness for example if you work for the government or a nonprofit."