<ol>
<li><p>U of Delaware</p></li>
<li><p>Newark, DE - lovely Main Street, accessible midpoint of the NE corridor, town basically grew up around the university. I wouldn’t wander the alleys at night, though.</p></li>
<li><p>Have lived in a 15-30 minute radius of the university/town for 9 years, and I go there often.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Ann Arbor (Michigan)
Athens (University of Georgia)
Austin (University of Texas)
Boulder (University of Colorado)
Burlington (University of Vermont)
Chapel Hill (University of North Carolina)
Carlottesville (University of Virginia)
Columbia (University of Missouri)
Gainesville (University of Florida)
Iowa City (University of Iowa)
Ithaca (Cornell University)
Lawrence (University of Kansas)
Madison (University of Wisconsin)</p>
<p>Those are my favorite college towns. Ann Arbor and Boulder are my top two because they are large enough to be fun but small enough to be quaint. Chapel Hill and Ithaca are great too, but a little too small for my taste and Austin and Madison are also great but probably a little too large.</p>
<p>Ann Arbor is the best college town. (UMich)
Madison (UW)
Boulder, CU
Ft Collins (ColoState)
La Jolla, (UCSD)
Santa Barbara (UCSB)
Santa Cruz (UCSC)</p>
<p>Santa Babara- UCSB Great college. The Riviera of California town of 60,000 I believe</p>
<p>I would recommend my school but its in a town of 300000 in a metro area of 2 million but it has 4 colleges ( UCR,Cal-Baptist, La Sierra, RCC)</p>
<p>^^The UCSB campus is a good 12 miles away from the town of Santa Barbara. The “college town” for UCSB is Isla Vista.</p>
<p>I’ll echo what many on here have already said and nominate Chapel Hill, NC. Great college town which is just a short drive away from the nation’s fastest growing metropolis.</p>
<p>I’ve also heard good things about Oxford, Mississippi, but haven’t been there yet so take that for what it is worth.</p>
<p>my vote for best college towns are:</p>
<p>Austin, Texas (if you don’t consider that a major city)
Boulder, Colorado
Madison, Wisconsin</p>
<p>Does anyone have any college town suggestions in the Pacific Northwest?</p>
<p>Ashland, OR–home of Southern Oregon University and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.</p>
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<p>Corvallis and Eugene, Oregon are each excellent college towns.</p>
<p>Bloomington, IN.
(Indiana University Bloomington)
Great college town. Extremely safe, lots of food options, great sports scene.</p>
<p>Brunswick, Maine— population 21,000 (Bowdoin College)</p>
<p>New Paltz, NY</p>
<p>I live about 15 minutes away, and it’s impossible to go there without seeing college kids buzzing about.</p>
<p>Lots of bars, and just a nice town altogether.</p>
<p>Goes to show…we all have different opinons on what makes a “college town”. For me, it is not a cool town that happens to have a college (i.e. Santa Cruz), but rather a town where the college dominates the population, culture, etc. Here are some of my favorites.
–Ithaca
–Hanover
–State College
–Charlottesville (although it is getting to be a city)
–Princeton (village)
–Gainseville
–Ann Arbor
–Williamstown
–Boulder
–Amherst</p>
<p>Missoula, MT (University of Montana)
A great cultural/outdoor/liberal “hub” where you wouldn’t expect to find one.</p>
<p>I’m going to add another vote for Clemson, SC. You can’t ask for a more beautiful, quintessential college town. The whole town is about the college, and the residents absolutely love the students and the university. There’s a couple lakes nearby and the mountains are only a short drive away. It’s definitely a small town, but it’s a really great place.</p>
<p>Another vote for UC Santa Barbara, Coureur’s poo bah notwitstanding. </p>
<p>You have a campus with 2 miles of pacific beach as part of the campus, the college community of Isla Vista adjacent, mountains as a backdrop a few miles away, and the shopping, culture and dining out of Santa Barbara proper a short bus ride away (lots of students have cars, too.) There is also a very good bike path that joins the campus to Santa Barbara, so a lot of students ride their bikes to town (and to the surrounding foothills etc.)</p>
<p>Lest one think UCSB is only for partying and surfing, one should look at the list of Nobel Prize winners on campus and the quality of things like the Kavli Institute.</p>
<p>I attended UCSB for grad school some years back and have visited the campus and area since then. I speak from experience.</p>
<p>I’ll third the University of California, Santa Barbara.</p>
<p>Town: Isla Vista (~18,500), loosely connected to the rest of the South Coast metro area (200,000)</p>
<p>Most of the places listed so far have been “parent’s college towns”: nice, family friendly, well-educated places. Isla Vista is a true “student’s college town”: dense, grungy, and completely focused on students. About 13,000 of the population are UCSB or SBCC students packed in a square mile area, and no family (who can afford it) would ever live there. </p>
<p>The nature of the set up of the town is conducive to the party atmosphere, and there is little “town and gown” tension simply because there aren’t many permanent residents, and thus police have pretty relaxed enforcement on partying. I challenge someone to name a place that has more non-chain 24 hour eateries clustered together. The beach is adjacent to the town and the mountains are 20 minutes away. For a more “grown up” experience, the beautiful city of Santa Barbara is 11 miles away.</p>
<p>How is Flagstaff with NAU?</p>
<p>Putting in a vote against Saratoga Springs. </p>
<p>I spent about four months there, and the place was absolutely dreadful. It’s located close enough to Albany, but the town itself is boring. If not for the racetrack, I have no idea why a person would go there. I don’t have a clue why I did.</p>