College grads shackled with student loan debt maybe should think about moving to Utah. Or Wyoming. Or perhaps North Dakota. According to WalletHub, these three states (in descending order) offer student borrowers the best chance of not getting mired in the morass of the nation’s growing student loan debt problem.

WalletHub, a Washington, D.C.-based financial information company, devised seven metrics to compare the 50 states and the District of Columbia in student debts. Those measures include unemployment rates for people aged 25 to 34, as well as student debt as a percentage of income adjusted by the cost of living. Other measures include average student debt and the proportion of students with debt.

WalletHub posits that student loan borrowers will do better in states that produce a combination of lower college-related debt levels, stronger economies and higher incomes. The latter two points seem intuitive. As far as college-related debt levels, many states in recent years have cut back on funding for higher education, resulting in higher tuition and increased borrowing by students attending college in those states.

Students and their parents can help their cause by parsing tuition costs, aid packages and potential loan burdens.

“It’s important to distinguish between debt levels incurred at certain colleges and the tuition charged,” says WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez, adding that a school such as Princeton University is expensive on paper but has one of the lowest college-debt-per-graduate rates in the country due to a mix of grants and financial aid packages.

For those people already grappling with burdensome student loan payments, the WalletHub metrics pertaining to unemployment and cost-of-living levels shine a light on places that might improve these students’ odds of paring down their debt more quickly.

In that vein, North Dakota and Utah score best in terms of lowest unemployment rates for the 25- to 34-year-old crowd, followed by South Dakota, Nebraska and Minnesota. Meanwhile, Wyoming and Utah are tops in the cost of living, followed by North Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota. Granted, many recent college grads on the coasts probably have little desire to relocate to so-called “flyover country” and would prefer to make their mark in such places as California, New York or the District of Columbia. These places, though, rank among the five states with the highest student debt as a percentage of income (adjusted for the cost of living), along with hipster haven Oregon and tropical Hawaii.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as of this year’s first quarter there was $1.19 trillion in outstanding student loan balances, or roughly $78 billion more than there was in the same period last year. Meanwhile, total student loan debt that was 90-plus days delinquent or in default was 11.1% of aggregate student loan debt.