We are not solving a math problem here. If I had a nickel for every human being I’ve heard say, “Boston is a great college town,” I’d be somewhere else doing something else. Apparently they are all mistaken.
But, I’m not that invested: if you say it’s not a college town, then it’s not a college town. IDRC.
Honestly, it’s like a lot of things: you know it when you see it, and opinions will vary.
It is funny, though, because I would characterize both Boston and Pittsburgh as “great college towns” because they are great places to go to college but I don’t think of them in the category of Blacksburg or Bloomington where the college is dominant.
I certainly wouldn’t call New York a college town, but I would Princeton…
Maybe the way to think about it is the individual areas/neighborhoods the colleges are in. I think the average person would walk through Cambridge and think “college town”.
Ann Arbor is a college town - anyone dispute?
Is Columbus a college town? To me, while Columbus definitely reeks of OSU (maybe a bad choice of words there, but GO BLUE or GO GREEN/WHITE) it is so much more. The capital city of Ohio, home base to state agencies/organizations, etc. (by the way I love the city of Columbus, I have 2 daughters there, just not the sports of the college in the town!!)
Yes - I live 10 blocks from Reed, and go to the farmers market every Saturday that’s held at Portland State University. Those are two colleges that happen to be in our city, they’re not what I would say are even in the to 50 things that someone would think about when you think of Portland, Oregon.
Reed’s a great campus for walking though - the canyon is always peaceful and lovely!
Generally agree. But according to this, Boston is 20% college students! 
The city definitely has a somewhat “college city” (not town) vibe.
Kid almost… almost picked UNC for her grad degree. When we visited, I fell in love with the area. Definitely a college town!
I’d say most people would consider Boulder a ‘college town’ but I don’t think anywhere close to 50% of the residents are connected to the college. I think when I worked in the court there only 2 of our jurors were students (one a freshman who was raised in Boulder, the other a grad student who lived in the county but not the city) and I don’t think there was ever a professor or even a staff member. Most people who live in town work at IBM, Ball Aerospace, small businesses or in Denver (commuters). Many work in city or county government (our governor is from Boulder).
The smaller town I grew up in had the college in the center of town and brought us all kinds of entertainment and culture, but most of our parents worked at the insurance company, the brewery, the paper mill, in small businesses or in teaching. Only a few at the college.
I have a friend who lives in Amherst, MA. Definitely a nice college town/area (Northampton as well). Princeton is more like a suburb with a magnificent university campus plopped in the middle. But, it doesn’t really dominate the town (unlike Amherst). I think that is the issue with Boulder.
One surprising variant. McGill is a major force in the city of Montreal. Whole parts of the town are student apartments. So, parts of the city feels a bit like a university town even though it does not dominate the city.
I lived there for a while some years ago. Nice leafy streets, a well run city, but not something I’d call a college town. Coworkers who went there said they seldom if ever went downtown as students, Stanford just across El Camino Real had everything they needed. And you don’t see students walking around downtown (University and California Aves) the way you do around Cal Poly SLO which I’d consider a college town.
My definition of a college town is a town that would be pretty much nothing if the college was not there. Hamilton, NY, home of Colgate University threw my working definition for a loop, as I find that there is nothing there even with a well renown college close by!!
Same with Lewisburg, Pa where Bucknell is.
Doesn’t Lewisburg, PA have both a college AND a federal prison?
I remember the first time I came to UF to visit my brother (student there at the time) and I was flabbergasted that in the mall’s Burdines (like a Macy’s) there were giant alligator shaped columns (think Albert and Alberta) between the first and second floor escalator area.
Between that and ALL the orange and blue everywhere I was like, “This town is nuts….all it cares about is the football team”.
Yes, I’ve since wiped the mud off my face bc I’ve lived here (came to school myself a few years later after the above visit) ever since.
You mean this prison? USP Lewisburg
This is what is so interesting about Middletown. Wide swaths of the outlying parts aren’t affected at all by Wesleyan. The central business district very definitely is.
@mikemac, the students do go into Palo Alto but to do internships at the various firms. Both tech and VC firms have office right at the edge of campus.
Yep. The college kids who lived off campus was one of the major reasons we moved across town. The thing that really killed me was that the very upscale neighborhood north of the campus got pool and gym passes, while our just as close and more affected neighborhood did not.
We looked for a place to eat pizza near the campus and found nothing.
When I first saw this thread, my initial reaction is that I don’t live in a college town, but then I realized I was being ridiculous. The major employer here is the university, and there are several colleges in and around town, and my neighborhood is probably about 80% grad students. When I thought “college town”, what popped into my mind was a town that revolved pretty much solely around an undergraduate college, and was college-centric.
Where I live it feels like the university is there to serve the town, not the other way around. Because the university is here, we have excellent hospitals and other medical care that we wouldn’t otherwise have, and we have more career opportunities and a higher level of pay.
I also love living near my young neighbors. They have an optimism and vitality that is energizing and happy to be around. I haven’t experienced issues with partying except noise the weekend after finals for fall and spring semester, otherwise I think they are generally quieter than most neighbors would be since the grad students are studying all the time. And, since it’s only 2 weekends a year, I’m happy for them that they accomplished the end of their semester and can let off some steam then. I also feel like they look after me a little; several have helped me with bags when they saw me struggling, and once I left my front door open and someone else came by to make sure I was OK. While you might get that in other neighborhoods, with the grad students they come and go at all different times so you see more people.