Cal Tech is in Pasadena, a suburb of Los Angeles. USC is the only school truly in the heart of the city of Los Angeles. UCLA is still part of LA but on the west end. Occidental is closer than Cal Tech but in a city next to Pasadena known as Eagle Rock.
Pepperdine is in Malibu, not LA.
Tulane is in New Orleans.
I think in Boston, Cambridge counts. Especially given OP said that Harvard was the exclusion. While Cambridge is, well, Cambridge, a BU or NEU kid would travel just as far on the T to get to the “heart” of Boston as they would from MIT. Everyone in Boston doesn’t distinguish between the schools in Back Bay and those in Cambridge when it comes to being “in” Boston.
So on that note, for Boston, I would say: MIT, BU, NEU and Emerson are the four best for a student wanting the true urban experience, though I hesitate with MIT because it’s as out of reach as Harvard for most students. I went to BU so I have a clear bias for that school LOL.
Atlanta: Tech, since Emory would be the best school in Atlanta (but if you’re not excluding it, given it’s not an Ivy, Emory is great–in a really cute part of metro ATL. Offers a great compromise for a student who wants a campus but easy access to city life things). On the lower end (than Tech) and one of the colleges that changes lives, Agnes Scott is right in Decatur, another great area of metro ATL.
LA: USC is really your only choice for the urban school experience in LA. I consider UCLA the most difficult school to get into in LA (and a kid who wants “urban LA” may not like the distance of Westwood anyway). CalTech is in Pasadena. I love Pasadena a lot, but its not “LA.”
D.C.: GWU or American
@Much2learn, while I also would not call Tufts an urban school or as being within Boston, both Harvard and MIT, though in Cambridge, are nearly as urban as Northeastern or BU. Not just because they have a subway stop, but because they both have the feeling of being distinctly in an urban area with the amenities of a city close by. Most Bostonians consider Cambridge to be an extension of Boston.
You can easily walk to downtown Boston from Cambridge, and Pasadena is closer to downtown LA than many parts of LA are. Seems ridiculous to me to rule out schools in Cambridge and Pasadena.
Add:
Simmons College, Boston
Lesley U, Cambridge, MN
various, Twin Cities (MN)
Marquette U, Milwaukee
Mills College, Oakland, CA
U of San Franciso & SFSU, SF, CA
UC-Berkeley (CA)
I just found out that MIT frats are across the river, on BU’s campus. If the two schools are that close, I would count MIT as part of Boston. Villanova, on the other hand is no where close to walking distance to any part of Philadelphia’s center city. It’s a good ten miles or more from center city (Haverford and Bryn Mawr are closer. Even Swarthmore may be closer - it was only a twenty minute train ride to Penn’s campus)