SF vs San Jose vs Seattle vs Portland vs Denver (job market, transfer)

[fromthebay]

Me and my wife are 20 and 21. She's finishing up school and right about the time she does I'll be transfering to a college somewhere hopefully in one of these cities just your thoughts about what is best and worst about each one. Anything you know about the latter 3 would be great because I've got quite a bit of experience with the first two thanks.

[Hoarfrost]

Ranking by schools, the Bay Area wins for quality(Berkely) and variety(SFSU, SJSU, USF, UCSF, et al). Next would be Seattle with the University of Washington which is a public ivy.

For Jobs I would assume Denver wins because I know Portland and Oregon have some of the highest unemployment around and none of the major companies in Seattle are hiring. but it really would depend on what you do. I don't know about the Job situation in the Bay area.

Denver is colder and snowier, Seattle and Portland are temperate and rainy. You probably already knew this, but the clear winner hear is SF/SJ.

Cost of living from lowest to highest would be Denver -> Portland -> Seattle -> Bay area. But you know the Bay area is expensive, and if you can live there you can live in any of those places.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

You hopefully realize that both SF and SJ are part of the same metro. There is a continuous conurbation stretching from central Marin Country, across the Golden Gate, down past SJ, then up the East Bay in two bands, one along the bay, the other along I-680, which both cross the Sacramento River and continue into Solano County. Check it out on a satellite image.

[jesssicar]

hey it sounds like you want local-people comments on any of these towns... im from the bay area so I can tell you about those but for the other cities try this site

TownMe - restaurants, business, schools and other info for your town

it has a lot of local info on the cities you mentioned. as for the bay area... it's kind of boring in the south bay. SF is probably a good place for clubbing and stuff.

[fromthebay]

im from the sf bay area.... lived there my whole life until now so i was wondering more compared to those two...

[PDX_LAX]

What kind of schooling will your wife be doing? Portland isn't known for its great higher education opportunities. And the job market in Portland right now is not good either.

[grapico]

I'd go back to sf/sj area given those choices... it has comparable stuff to do in education and employment up there with other big hitters like la/nyc/chicago/boston/dc/philly ...the others, not so many options across the spectrum.

don't forget stanford ...