Find out which college towns ranked highest in this new report: https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/new-rankings-reveal-best-college-locations/
While cost is an important factor, I think it’s obvious it’s weighted too highly when Rexburg, ID comes out as the #5 college town in the US.
Seeing Tampa come up on this list was a huge red flag given that the city across from it comes out 200 places lower despite having more going on socially and for young people, by far a better college town for virtually any layman definition.
There’s something very irregular about the “social environment factor”. Coming from around Tampa and going to school in Boston, the two are miles apart and I would recommend Tampa to absolutely no one, especially when St Pete is across the bay. Yet it receives a top 20 “social environment factor”, faring way above Boston. I think the use of “per capita” doesn’t really work in the way they use it. Having one nightclub for a town of 100 people is a very different experience than 10 nightclubs for 1000 people, yet the two would be equal in this ranking.
A lot of other criteria seem very off as well, such as using unemployment rate. Students count as unemployed, so the more students are in a town, the higher the unemployment rate. For a great example of that, the neighborhood in Boston with the highest unemployment rate is Fenway, a neighborhood with some of the higher rents in Boston that is mostly college students from Northeastern, BU, and a few other schools in the area. Yet in this ranking, high unemployment rate lowers the score of the college town, and makes up 5% of the ranking. The same problems of contradiction with large college populations also come up with things like share of part-time jobs as well, again more present with high populations of students.
There must be some serious flaws in this ranking! The article says Orlando ranks number one for midsize cities. The greater Orlando area has about 2.5 million population, whereas the article says the midsize category goes up to 300 thousand.
The original article was made just for clicks (because its list is so ridiculous and wrong), and by summarizing and linking to it here, the OP admin has fallen for the super-obvious trap hook, line, and sinker. 
Glad I didn’t click on it… having lived in St Pete and reading @PengsPhils assessment plus rankings of St Pete and Tampa, I realize it’s truly not worth the time. Whoever wrote it doesn’t share my thoughts.
Totally useless ranking.