Where are you getting that from? Hampshire county, where Amherst is located, has only 160,000 residents according to Wikipedia.
That can qualify as rural, but hardly qualifies as the middle of nowhere TBH. Quite a few colleges are located in smaller towns. Where my parents went there were two colleges in a town with a population of 15,322 according to Google.
I get your point that it isn’t the big city, so kids wanting that should know, of course. Feel free to join us in some of our travels if you want to see the middle of nowhere. 
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This entry provides information about the nation’s 70th largest metropolitan area, which includes Amherst Springfield metropolitan area, Massachusetts - Wikipedia