OT: G5 College Town Rankings
Dan Wetzel shared this list, at least as a topic for debate.
https://twitter.com/danwetzel/status/1380517667199721473?s=21
Top of the list is Fort Collins, CO. Local towns include Mt. Pleasant at 12, BG at 16, Kalamazoo at 24, Ypsilanti at 48 (one spot ahead of UNLV), and Toledo at 53. Last place was El Paso. Presumably the real show is across the river in Juarez.
Anyone have there own thoughts?
Yes - As a Colorado State alum who has moved back home to Grand Rapids, I can safely say Fort Collins is a great college town and hits just about everything you'd want during your time in college and after.
Go Rammies!
Dated someone in FoCo for a few months while teaching in the Nebraska panhandle. Odell brewing and fat shack were some of my favorite haunts then.
Hitting a Rams game at the new football stadium is on my list of obscure sporting events to see although they are also coming to the big house soon.
Fun Fact: CSU has a student-run bar on campus in the student center basement called the Ramskellar that is open to the public. You could easily finish your physics class in the Glover Hall and walk about 50 ft to have a delicious craft beer with friends. Which is what I did after many(every) class that semester. The bar only has beer on tap or bottles but has decent food and good size TVs. Good times.
If Eastern Michigan's campus were a little more integrated with the rest of Ypsilanti and not - yet again - far overshadowed by its Power 5 neighbor to the west where much of the actual "stuff to do" is located, this is a little different, I would think.
There are definitely a lot of positives to EMU's location. Ypsi is decent, Ann Arbor is next door, the Detroit area is on the other side, there's an international airport right down the road, even the Canadian border is not that far away. There's just the one big negative of having the state's flagship university next door to draw a lot of the oxygen out of the room.
Does Las Vegas count? because they should be #1.
downvotes are weird.
of COURSE las vegas should be #1. people aren't going to unlv because of the spectacular academics.
Unless you want to get into hospitality as a career
Not sure we could call Las Vegas a "college town." If it is, then yep, near the top of the list with strong competition from another college town, NYC.
Albuquerque should be higher based on green chile alone.
Yeah but then you have to dock them a few points for the potent diarrhea afterwards.
But in all honesty, green chile is amazing and weird to think that it's only really a thing in the southwest.
Also can we please abolish the "wet burritos" in West Michigan? It's as if your Aunt Tammy put tomato sauce on a very large, un-seasoned meat tortilla-thing that will only turn into leftovers for dayyys. Portion control, my friends.
Green chile is all over the place. I've purchased it in Chicago and at several rural (or near-rural) spots in Michigan.
Agreed on the wet burritos. They're an abomination.
April 10th, 2021 at 10:01 AM ^
Not while people still think Beltline Bar has good food. I think we are at least another generation away from getting over the "covered a dry burrito in some kind of sauce so it's a wet burrito" hump
The author of the list clearly attended CSU-Pueblo and prefers their green chiles.
Green chili and Christmas burritos are great, but Albuquerque is pretty gross and depressing city. Santa Fe would be an awesome college town/city though
I'll say this about Mt. Pleasant. It was a great place to get drunk. I had a lot of friends at CMU when I attended UM. I would trek up north a few times per semester to imbibe cheap beer with them. And I would always be jealous that they partied on Thurs, Fri, and Saturday. I would've flunked out during my first semester if I had adopted that strategy.
Other than ample quantities of beer, I don't recall much about the actual town. I just knew how to arrive, drink beer, and depart with a hangover.
In a way that was probably not intended... name checks out.
My wife went to grad school at CMU in Mt Pleasant. Neither mountainous, nor pleasant, in her words.
Wish I could say the same about a CMU alum I dated briefly.
And I would always be jealous that they partied on Thurs, Fri, and Saturday.
Am I the only one who was a completely mediocre student because Sunday was the only night I didn't go to the bars?
Tuesday was my only off night for a year and it is easy to see on my transcript. Learned a lot of life lessons that year though. Mostly the hard way.
Which is why, unless absolutely necessary, 1) never enroll in a class that starts earlier than 10:00 AM and 2) never enroll in a class that meets on Friday.
I had a couple semesters of an only Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday schedule.
It was glorious.
Kalamazoo ranked behind BG?? Are you kidding me?
Yeah, that's ridiculous. Kalamazoo is an actual town, and Bowling Green is two streets. I did my undergrad at BG, and I remember walking around town when I was there for orientation- I think we walked through the whole thing in about 5 minutes.
Bowling Green, OH is a horrifying post-apocalyptic hellscape. I assume it's easy to get drunk there as an undergrad, which is why it's on the list?
The ironic thing about this is that BG used to be a dry town/campus...
i can't even describe how much i hate myself for paying any attention to this list.
I guess it depends on how you define "college town." Some of these seem to be more on the merits of "best town with a college" moreso than a true "college town." I think of Ann Arbor as a college town. I think of Orlando and New Orleans and Dallas as "towns" with colleges. Maybe that doesn't really change anything and I'm the only one pedantic enough to think about this.
Ann Arbor isn't on there because the list is specifically a ranking of Group of 5 college towns, not Power 5 college towns.
That's not the point he was trying to make.
You get me, man
Which is that some of these are not, imo, college towns. Maybe using Athens, OH would've been less confusing as the true college town example, but didn't think anyone would be confused by my referencing AA which is, imo, a quintessential college town.
Perhaps I'm a bit biased, but I think Kalamazoo should be higher
Agreed. My brother went to WMU and lived on the on the side street that Waldo's sits along. Luckily he was uphill from the bar, as the street was fairly steep, and walking home downhill whilst liquored up would have been unsafe. Had a lot of fun visiting Kzoo.
Feel like Ypsi should be higher. Great food and drink there and AA is so close and AA is always top 10 in these kinds of rankings. I guess if you’re only allowed to include Ypsi it changes it but that’s a myopic way to view things
Solid list. I would like to see how they were ranked specifically. For example Boise is above New Orleans, San Diego, and Honolulu. Not disagreeing, merely interested.
Boise does not even remotely strike me as a college town, but I've never been so what do I know?
Heard amazing things about Athens, and I'm sure Fort Collins is great as well. Probably due in no small part to their rather forgiving nature on certain controlled substances.
I'm a bit surprised that places like Atlanta and Philly aren't higher on the list, but I guess it must depend on how you define college town. If you're just looking at towns with colleges in them, then New Orleans and Las Vegas would undoubtedly be much, much higher up.
Boise is basically a Chobani factory, a potato plant, and a few moose.
If you're looking for a good time, every true Idahoan knows you go to Moscow.
Having lived in Pullman and worked in Moscow, I can, for a fact say that every true Idahoan looking for a good time knows you go to Coeur d'Alene. Other acceptable answers include McCall, Cascade, or anywhere in the mountains. Boise is your typical small state capital with some industry in the suburbs (Hewlett Packard) and good hiking available nearby if you want to take a long lunch.
Boise is actually pretty awesome. But it's not really a college town... mostly because BSU is/was a commuter college.
Agreed on both counts. Boise has grown a ton lately with lots of Californians moving there because it’s got a lot to offer. It’s on a lot of the fastest growing and best small city lists these days. Definitely more of a city than a college town
It seems like it would be a cool place to visit. I had relatives who lived in Couer D'Alene for a few years so I know there's definitely a draw for people to want to go to Idaho. It just doesn't seem like Boise would be much of a college town. Unless there are several other notable schools in the city that I'm not thinking of.
Glad Logan showed up where it did, it's a great city with excellent outdoor recreation. Lacking in bars (it's Utah, so that's not what the majority of people here do at night), but has pretty much everything else you'd want.
athens ohio in the top 10 but honolulu and san diego aren't. impossible to take seriously
Obviously you have never been to Athens. It's ranking college towns, Athens and some others on here are the definition of college towns. When you break through the mountains into Athens, it is 100% obvious that it is a college town even from the highway.
I've been to Athens, dated a woman who lived there. Spent a god amount of my time there and if a single person on earth told me they preferred it to either san diego or honolulu I'd assume they had been dropped as a child ... repeatedly
Your reply means you obviously didn't understand the purpose of the article, which was the towns ranked as college towns, not singles meet up towns. San Diego is a city, Honolulu is a tourist destination, I'd hardly call them "college towns". Ann Arbor is much more of a college town than either of those.
you get that maybe to some people the concept of a college town isn't just some midwestwern/north eastern knock off version of what cambridge and oxford looked like at the turn of the century right?
April 10th, 2021 at 10:31 AM ^
I would have ranked Athens 1. One of my favorite little spots in the entire country!
It's geographically one of the most picturesque campuses out there. Rolling hills situated along the Hocking river, beautiful tall trees throughout campus, brick roads, beautiful architecture, and extremely walkable. A quick drive to Strouds run for clear water to fish/swim/hike.
Great food options, a plethora of bars, and Jackie O's is an outstanding Ohio brewery. Lastly, it's highly affordable due to low income area which is a whole other story but great for a college student.
My Rankings:
First: Ann Arbor
Last: Colombus & South Bend in a tie!