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I think a great college town is a town that is small enough to revolve around a major university, but still big enough to have a vibrant downtown and thriving culture.
College towns the size of places like Ann Arbor, MI, Madison, WI, Durham, NC, and Berkeley, CA are some of the best in my opinion.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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OP here, I defiantly think my first college experience (University of Louisville) would have been better in a true college town. The main problems my campus had was some overflow crime (most car break ins on campus parking, an occasional robbery of a student and the smelly air from factories that are 5 miles away. Traffic wasn't bad at all since the old city limits of Louisville has lost 1/3 of its population since 1970. I did love having Bardstown Rd and all its coffee shops just 10 minutes away.
Kentucky's other research university (University of Kentucky) also has an urban campus with some overflow crime (mostly aggressive homeless people and a robbery/ armed rape every now and then) and horrible traffic (I mean 15 minutes to go 1 mile). The main shopping areas from campus (Fayette Mall and Hamburg Pavilion) are 20 minutes/ 5 miles away through stop and go traffic.
I think Richmond and Murray are Kentucky's two best college towns by far.
Hard for me to pick a vote. I think somewhere that the University and City are the same size; but that it is a major/large university. I lived in State College...population about 40,000 and Penn State maybe a bit larger(43,000)
but there are other towns adjacent to State College to increase it's population.
I like an actual college town where the town revolves around the college. A size of 30-50k population seems about right. Being within an hour of a major city is a plus
That sounds exactly like Ithaca NY, which revolves around 2 colleges in Cornell University(mainly) and Ithaca College.
To would say that a population of 27,455 would be ideal. Coincidentally this happens to be the pop. of College Park, MD. That said, College Park doesn't really offer much except for bars and some chains, but cheap beer is #1 on any college town's must have list. There used to be a Wawa's, but not anymore. Anyway, none of that matters since downtown DC is a 10-15 min Metro ride away, and Baltimore is a 20-30min drive (or you can take the MARC commuter train to DC or Balt but it's inconvenient).
Traditionally speaking, a college town is small and rural so that life in said city (entertainment, employment, etc.) completely revolves around the university. Personally, I would hate that small town atmosphere and very urban schools in big cities (USC, NYU, University of Washington, etc.) are what I prefer.
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