<p>Boulder, CO
Nice size. Safe. Good weather. Excellent access to world class outdoor activities. Pearl Street. High quality independent stores and restaurants. Interesting and varied cultural scene. Well thought out bike paths. Plethora of public transportation options.</p>
<ol>
<li>New York City</li>
<li>Boston</li>
<li>Washington DC</li>
</ol>
<p>Other honorable mentions: Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, Montreal, New Orleans, Charleston, Boulder</p>
<p>Replying to recent post-</p>
<p>Is Ann Arbor really that much of a college town? One of the best college towns in the USA if not Midwest? Just would like to know information about the area.</p>
<p>Oh sure Pierre, NYC is a wonderful college town. I remember seeing all of the students while I was walking in the south Bronx............</p>
<p>
[quote]
1. New York City
2. Boston
3. Washington DC</p>
<p>Other honorable mentions: Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, Montreal, New Orleans, Charleston, Boulder
[/quote]
Most of those are not college towns at all. Just because a city happens to have a university does not make it a college town. A "college town" is a town/city that is known by the university. When somebody says "Ann Arbor", you think of UMich. When somebody says "Madison", you think if UW. If someone says "New York" nobody is going to think of Columbia or NYU and if you say "DC" nobody will think of GT, GW, AU etc. </p>
<p>Boston is the only one of those I would really call a college town simply because so much of the population are students and it's really an area known for the schools in the area.
EDIT: Boulder as well</p>
<p>Personally, I think Northampton (MA) is a wonderful college town. Home of New England's five colleges, and a really nice (but not big) city with quite a bit to do for its relatively small size.</p>
<p>Actually mephist0 if you really think about it, the vast majority of the best colleges and universities aren't in Boston per se but in the surrounding suburbs.</p>
<p>Boulder, without a doubt.</p>
<p>For a small college town, it's tough to beat Northfield, MN.</p>
<p>If you're gona eliminate large cities, you may as well eliminate cities like Austin too. Austin has well over a million people in the metro. But how do you define a college town? I guess the typical answers to this question would be cities like Ann Arbor, Gainesville, Athens, Boulder, Norman, etc... but I would define a college town as any city that benefits greatly from the school's presence. So basically, cities like Minneapolis and Austin would make my list... but places like LA, New York, and Chicago do not because those cities really don't need any of their schools to function.</p>
<p>Ruston, LA ..home of Louisiana Tech.</p>
<p>Not a great well known college or anything...but I live right near Ruston and it is like...completely all about Tech. You see probably 20% of all shirts at the store with "Tech" or "Go Bulldawgs" on them.</p>
<p>NYC is not a college town. It hardly fits the bill of what a college town should be like..</p>
<p>Definition:
A college town or university town is a community (often literally a town, but possibly a small or medium sized city, or in some cases a neighborhood or a district of a city) which is dominated by its university population. (wikipedia)</p>
<p>Google "College town". Baltimore is one of the most quintessential college towns.</p>
<p>The Baltimore Collegetown shuttle bus shuttle links 16 colleges or 120,000 students together and provides regular services from each school to the massive Towson mall and Inner harbor/Downtown Baltimore. All Students ride for free.</p>
<p>Baltimore actually provides free bus services to hop from one school to the next. You can ride to the mall or go down to Inner harbor all for free if you want, you just have to show your college Id. It is pretty sweet.</p>
<p>
Yes, I was thinking about that. I think I would remove Austin from my list and replace it with Ithaca.</p>
<p>Ann Arbor, MI
Athens, GA
Bloomington, IN
Boston, MA
Boulder, CO
Chapel Hill, NC
Eugene, OR
Gainesville, FL
Ithaca, NY
Madison, WI</p>
<p>Austin gets removed for being too big but Boston remains on the list? Interesting.</p>
<p>
[quote]
what about pittsburgh? Wasn't there some statistic saying that pittsburgh had the highest number of college students? Or am I confusing another city with that title?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Within PA that would be Philadelphia, home to 120,000 college students in the city proper and 300,000 when you throw in the schools in the nearby suburbs</p>
<p>IN MY OPINION, a college town thrives and is recognized because of the school(s) that are located there. Therefore Cambridge is a college town, while Boston is not. When you hear the name of a city/town and the first or second thing that pops up in your mind is not a college or a university, then it's not really a college town.</p>
<p>^ So what about New Haven then? The first thing that pops up into my mind is "terrible," and the second is "Yale"</p>
<p>It counts as a college town ilovebagels since the second thing that popped up in your mind was Yale. :-)</p>
<p>
There are over sixty colleges in the Boston area. It's a veritable student mecca.</p>
<p>My subjective and idiosyncratic list:</p>
<p>Cambridge/Berkeley (tied)
Ann Arbor
Evanston
Hyde Park in Chicago (no, really.)
Ithaca, I've heard</p>
<p>all the other cool places I don't really know about</p>
<p>We've really got two definitions of college town going here.</p>
<p>One definition is a town that is dominated by the colleges and universities that call it home. Usually these cities (with the exception of Boston and Austin) are small and have few other big industries. Examples include Boston, Austin, Madison, Gainesville, Charlottesville, College Park, Ithaca, Evanston, Ann Arbor.</p>
<p>The other definition people are using is "best town for a college student to live in". These are usually big cities that are very diverse places in terms of people, industry, and culture. Some fantastic cities include San Francisco, NYC, San Antonio, Pittsburgh, Washington DC.</p>