Every college students knows that going to college is expensive. Whether you’re going to a top-tier private school, a large public research university, or a local community college, it’s not cheap. Obviously, the price varies greatly. If you have some impressive academic credentials, great writing skills, and a load of extracurricular activities to put on an application, you might be thinking about applying to some of the higher-ranked schools in the country. If you’re wondering how much that will cost you—and if it’s worth it—here are a few things to think about.

The latest Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Sarah Lawrence College in New York has a total cost of almost $56,000 per year. That’s a lot of money. Is it worth it? With a small campus (less than 1,300 students), every student gets a great deal of one-on-one interaction with their professors. In fact, the Sarah Lawrence class system is built on the basis of having both classes and individual face time with professors. They also offer a large number of scholarships and grants to students, which helps reduce the average amount paid by the school’s attendees. Sarah Lawrence is known as having a pretty rigorous liberal arts program, so you can count on having a good reputation backing up your diploma.

Georgetown University is another school very near the top of the price list at just over $52,000 per year. In addition to this high cost of tuition, it also has an exacting standard of academic excellence and a pretty impressive job placement rate. So again, there are quite a few factors to consider.

One of the important things to think about when it comes to choosing a school (especially if you’re looking at a college as expensive as Sarah Lawrence or Georgetown) is the job placement assistance that the school offers. This is a very significant factor in separating colleges. Make sure to take a look at this when making your decisions. It’s also important to take into account the field that you’re looking at entering. If you’re going into an extremely specialized field, there may not be very many people that will have your qualifications, so companies are more likely to seek you out. On the flipside, if you get a degree in business, there will be tens of thousands (if not more) of people in your area that just graduated with the same qualifications. So job placement assistance might be a deal breaker.

Highly ranked, expensive schools certainly do have their advantages. But they’re not the right choice for everyone. Make sure to look at as many factors as you can when making your decision, and you’ll be much more likely to make the right one.