This depends: what are your interest rates? Do you have a single rate or multiple rates. How much do you have in an emergency fund?
A general strategy would be this:
1. establish an emergency fund allowing for 3-6 months living expenses
2. maximize any free money (IE employer matched contributions)
3. Pay down high interest debt (IE student loans)
4. (I'm not here yet but other stuff, such as maximizing tax incentivized retirement options)
Basically, unless you're getting free money it is going to be difficult to beat the investment in paying down your loans. If they are anything like mine (and as you're at least a year later than me they're likely the same or worse) It will be difficult to find any retirement or investment options that will match the approximately 7.x% interest rates your loans are accruing.
Things to think about: if you have significantly different interest rates between some of your loans (for me 6.8 for ~2/3, 7.9 for 1/3) then it is to your advantage to have the lowest possible required payment across the board so that you can target your high interest loans. Nothing is stopping you from paying more than the required amount (other than availability of funds). If you don't play on paying off rapidly do you plan on utilizing any of the loan forgiveness programs? If so then consider the income based options.
Check out this spreadsheet:
http://www.vertex42.com/Calculators/debt-reduction-calculator.html
Play with it to see what makes the most sense to you.
For me I don't plan on utilizing a loan forgiveness program (who knows if they'll still be around when I need it) and my financial situation allows me to be aggressive in my repayment. For the first six months of residency I paid 2000 bucks a month while still in deferment target at my highest interest rate loans. About a week ago I paid 28K again towards the highest interest rate loans (wish I'd have done it 6 months ago and saved the interim interest but it took a while to convince my wife that our savings was sufficient for that). I signed up for the extended AND graduated repayment plan (lowest monthly repayment without the annoyance of IBR/PYE paperwork) which has approximately 1400/month in minimum payments over the next 2 years (goes up after that, will need to see if there is a breakpoint between extended graduated and extended). I plan on maintaining a total repayment of 2000/month targeting the extra 600 at the high interest rate loans. Each year in residency I feel I can afford an increase in my monthly payments by 250 with a goal of at least 4000/month when I have an attending sized paycheck. With this strategy I will finish repayment in 114 more months.
