<p>By surrounding area, does the OP mean geographic features, like mountains and rivers, or the "town" as in the architecture and layout of the buildings?</p>
<p>For the latter, i vote for princeton because i'm bias, though it is small, i admit. For landscape, i personally think rural northeast schools would be top, like middlebury, cornell, etc. Actually, ithaca/cornell would rank rather highly on both lists, in my opinion.</p>