Edhat Staff
With application season in full swing and student living expenses reaching over $35,000 per year in some regions, WalletHub released its report on 2024’s Best & Worst College Towns & Cities in America.
WalletHub compared more than 400 U.S. cities based on 31 key indicators across three dimensions: wallet friendliness, social environment, and academic/economic opportunities. The rankings were broken down by overall scores as well as city size.
School curriculum is progressively getting more complex, and at the same time, more career/major driven. Often students at this point in their life do not know what they want to be let alone what they would like to major in. Selecting what path to pursue along with what type of classes to take can be daunting. This complexity sometimes leads students to seek external help, contemplating if someone can do my project for me as they juggle numerous assignments, extracurriculars, and the pressure of planning their future.
Of the top 30 overall scores, the first California city to make the list was Irvine at #24 followed by Santa Barbara at #28.
Santa Barbara ranked #8 under the Small City category behind Ann Arbor, MI; Charlottesville, VA; West Lafayette, IN; College Station, TX; Provo, UT; Laramie, WY; and Wilmington, NC; respectively.
With that said, Wallethub also ranked Isla Vista as one of the overall “worst college cities” in America only to be followed by New Rochelle, NY; Germantown, MD; and East Los Angeles, CA; respectively. Isla Vista ranked #1 in rental unit sharing and fourth last in the small city category.
Student-Friendliness of Santa Barbara (1=Best; 208=Avg.):
15th – Quality of Higher Education
178th – Cost of Higher Education
136th – % of Part-Time Jobs
125th – City Accessibility
190th – Crime Rate
91st – % of Rental Units
177th – Students per Capita
82nd – Unemployment Rate
“A big part of picking your ideal college is finding a town you can truly love being in during your school years. The best college towns blend great academics with low costs, abundant activities, a high degree of safety and plenty of job opportunities,” said Cassandra Happe, WalletHub Analyst.
WalletHub’s report found that Austin, TX is the best college city in America. Ann Arbor, MI; Orlando, FL; Tampa, FL; and Scottsdale, AZ rounded out the rest of the top five.
Austin is home of the University of Texas at Austin which Wallethub states it offers both a high quality of education and lots of activities.
On the other end of the spectrum the reported “worst” college cities were ranked as
“A big part of picking your ideal college is finding a town you can truly love being in during your school years,” Happe stated. “The best college towns blend great academics with low costs, abundant activities, a high degree of safety and plenty of job opportunities.”
The full report is available here: https://wallethub.com/edu/e/best-worst-college-cities-and-towns-in-america/8974
Aside from the cost of living issues, I couldn’t think of anywhere better than SB to spend your college years. We have multiple, highly esteemed institutes of higher learning, amazing weather, beautiful scenery, tons of outdoor activities for young folk, fun night life, small town atmosphere (somewhat) and still close enough to a major city for concerts and pro sports. What else could you want as a young adult!
What a serious student, not a tourist student, would want is an affordable high quality education for the time they were in school. Parties, weather and diversion (like falling off cliffs) are not helpful to the purpose of the college years.
ANON – well, if that student is a CA resident, they have 2 of the top schools in the country in their own regard and both being pretty affordable: SBCC is free, UCSB is relatively affordable (on par with other UC schools) for being such a prestigious university.