<p>PENN!!!! columbia...those are the two i visited and liked. tho i'm not applyin to columbia</p>
<p>zfox001 -- what the heck are you talking about?!</p>
<p>Rice is literally IN downtown Houston. You clearly don't know anything about Rice or where it is if you didn't even notice where it was. Maybe because it's a very park-like and contained atmosphere that you didn't notice Rice was in downtown Houston (4th biggest city in the country and home to the largest number of Fortune 500 companies), but that's what I like about it.</p>
<p>Rice has the hedges as a buffer from the bustling sounds of the city, but you can definitely see the skyscrapers and skylines from the Rice campus. I should know, I live here.</p>
<p>With those stats: Notre Dame (in South Bend which is a dump, but close to Chicago), BC, Tufts in Boston, Fordham in New York (they will likelyi offer you a bundle), St. Louis U and WashU in St. Louis, Villanova and Swarthmore in Philly, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Georgetown and GWU in DC, Emory in Atlanta, Davidson (near Charlotte), Vanderbilt in Nashville, Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill in NC, UVa in Charlottesville, </p>
<p>but you are plenty smart enough to figure this out.</p>
<p>Davidson is in a sleepy little college town. While Charlotte is nearby, Davidson is NOT an urban college by ANY stretch of the imagination. Same for UNC. Chapel Hill is not a big city. Even Duke, in Durham, is not exactly an "urban" college. The Old (east) campus is sorta downtown, but West campus is in the trees.</p>
<p>If you narrowly define downtown Houston as most people do, as that area bounded by I-45, I-10, and US-59, then no, Rice is not in downtown Houston. By Houston standards, it is definitely an urban campus. The Rice/West University area has not been considered suburban since WWII.</p>
<p>Northeastern University has the nicest campus i have seen even though it's located right in the middle of boston</p>
<p>ND is a good 90 miles from downtown Chicago. Hardly a hop,skip, or a jump away. I do agree with you on one point however, South Bend is a dump.</p>
<p>You didn't list your intended major, but Georgia Tech does a great job feeling campus-y even though you can see skyscrapers in 3 directions.</p>
<p>Northwestern University.</p>
<p>The campus is lovely with open views across Lake Michigan, 2 beaches, a sailing club, etc. It stretches about a mile in length. On its south side it adjoins downtown Evanston and via several El stops only a few blocks off-campus the rest of Chicago is easily accessed. If winter trimester were a bit warmer, I'd argue the best of all worlds location-wise.</p>
<p>Rhodes, Case Western, John Caroll, Richmond, John Hopkins,</p>
<p>Columbia, Barnard.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Georgetown.</p>
<p>Trinity U in SA, TX</p>
<p>U of San Diego</p>
<p>Penn, Columbia, and UChicago. If we're adding terrible cities to the list, Yale becomes an option. ;)</p>
<p>How about Wisconsin and Chicago? Wisconsin is in Madison, a very cosmopolitan city of a quarter million people in a metro area of a half million, and has a campus that is both integrated with the city but also has a very large section which is on a hill overlooking the city and the lake. Fantastic.</p>
<p>Chicago has a very well defined campus with "old school" architecture in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, a fifteen minute el ride from the Loop.</p>