Attention all my 2022-2023 seniors! We are finally getting to the point in the year where we need to start thinking about colleges and applying if we haven’t already.

When thinking about college, if you plan on going anywhere other than Pima or the U of A, you can’t just look at the school, you have to look at the entire city around it.

When I think about college and all the options out there, I try to not only think just of the school, but also keep the entertainment options and the price of living in mind. Wherever you decide to go, that will hopefully be the place you live for the next 4+ years, and you have 2 options. You can live on campus or off campus. Fortunately, many cities in the U.S. will be reasonable, but there are also many more options that will be insanely unrealistic.

WalletHub did all of the hard work for us. After ranking every college city/town in the U.S., they came up with a list from best to worst college cities based on a couple of different factors. Those factors are, “wallet friendliness, social environment, and academic & economic opportunities.”

The top 5 best cities are (1)Austin TX, (2)Ann Arbor MI, (3)Orlando FL, (4)Gainesville FL, and (5)Tampa FL.

The bottom 5 worst cities are (411)Germantown MD, (412)New Rochelle NY, (413)Compton CA, (414)Bridgeport CT, and (415)Flint MI.

Overall, there is a very wide spread of good cities and worse cities to live in each state. For example, Michigan is in the top 5 and the bottom 5. Wherever you decide to go to college is for you, and as long as you will be happy there that is all that matters. Some places will be ridiculously expensive and others will not be, but if you apply for scholarships and grants, you can make it work. After the ranking, Florida looks like a good option overall being 3/5 cities in the top 5, but so does every other state that is in the top half of the list.