If you’re stressing over your college choices, remember that you’re not just picking a campus where you’re going to study. You’re picking the town or city where you’re going to live for the next four years or so. If you plan to move into an off-campus apartment, that city will become even more of your daily life.
So what college towns or cities are worth living in?
The Princeton Review offers a few possible answers with its annual rankings, based on surveys of 143,000 students at 381 colleges and universities. (Side note: These Princeton Review rankings also include the annual declaration of the nation’s biggest party school. Go Wisconsin Badgers!)
The review asked students, “How do you rate the city or town where your school is located?”
Students at these schools rated their cities the highest:
Colleges Where Students Love the City
- Vanderbilt University | Nashville, TN
No surprise here. The local music and food scenes have made “Nash Vegas” the hipster hotspot of the South, and the metro’s population of young professionals has exploded in recent years. To house them all, there are a plethora of new apartments near Vanderbilt and across the city.
- Tulane University | New Orleans, LA
Two words: Mardis Gras. Tulane, not so coincidentally perhaps, also made the 2017 list as one of the top party schools. The campus is in the Uptown / Carrollton neighborhood, about 5 miles from the infamous French Quarter.
- Columbia University | New York, NY
- New York University | New York, NY
No, living in New York City as a college student may not be cheap. But there’s a lot of learning to do out there in the city, in Lower Manhattan in the case of NYU and Upper Manhattan for Columbia. Check out apartments near NYU and apartments close to Columbia, but note that New Jersey, just across the Hudson River, may offer more affordable choices.
- University of San Francisco | San Francisco, CA
Again, it may not be cheap to get a college apartment in San Francisco. This is the most expensive city in the country for average rent, after all. But you’ll be awarded all that international culture and natural beauty outside your door.
- University of Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh, PA
The rebirth of Pittsburgh from its steel-town past has been well-documented, and Pitt students clearly enjoy their city as well these days. Just outside the campus, students can take advantage of the Carnegie museums in the Oakland neighborhood.
- George Washington University | Washington, DC
Who wouldn’t love living in Washington for college? The Smithsonian museums alone offer several Ph.D.s worth of education – for free. The D.C. campus is in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, just about a mile from hotspots like Georgetown and Dupont Circle.
- Boston University | Boston, MA
- Stevens Institute of Technology | Hoboken, NJ
Yes, Hoboken. The city’s residents are young (nearly half between 20 and 34) and educated (almost three-quarters have a bachelor’s degree). It probably doesn’t hurt that Hoboken is a hotbed for people fleeing rising rental prices in Brooklyn. If you’re a Stevens Institute student, you also will find a lot of apartments nearby in Jersey City.
- Suffolk University | Boston, MA
Few cities in America are as synonymous with “college” as Boston is, and college students there seem to love it back. Both Boston University students, above, and students at Suffolk University, located smack in the middle of downtown, put their city in the top 10.
Since two of the cities above were rated twice, by students at different schools, we’ll mention No. 11 and 12, according to The Princeton Review: San Diego, praised by students at San Diego State University; and Fairfield, CT, one of the few non-urban cities on the list, rated highly by students at Fairfield University.
Colleges Where Students Don’t Like the Town
Let’s just say that military academy cadets don’t seem to care much for their surrounding cities, and students at colleges in smaller cities don’t always speak highly of their town-vs-gown counterparts, either. These are colleges where students gave their cities the lowest marks in the Princeton Review survey.
- The United States Coast Guard Academy | New London, CT
- New Jersey Institute of Technology | Newark, NJ
- United States Military Academy | West Point, NY
- Wheaton College | Norton, MA
- Hofstra University | Hempstead, NY
- Wabash College | Crawfordsville, IN
- Hampden-Sydney College | Hampden-Sydney, VA
- The State University of New York at Binghamton | Binghamton, NY
- Earlham College | Richmond, IN
- Tuskegee University | Tuskegee, AL
Your turn: Do you agree with the rankings? What do you think of your college town? Tell us in the comments.