Cost of living, career prospects should factor into school decision

When Dan Sharpe was looking at colleges during his senior year in high school, his search led him back to his home town near Columbus, Ohio.

Sharpe, who graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University a few years ago, also looked at East Coast schools but found their cost of living daunting. After two college internships, one of them in the Columbus area, he landed a job as a project manager with the non-profit Columbus Foundation after graduation.

Today, he lives in a spacious loft apartment in the city’s fashionable Brewery District for under $600 a month. Staying in the area during and after college “allowed me to take advantage of lots of internship options and keep my living costs reasonable,” he said.

Tuition, curriculum, and financial aid packages often top the list of considerations for high-school seniors anxiously awaiting college acceptances.

But as Sharpe’s experience shows, location can have a huge impact on college living costs, internships, and post-graduation employment.

“I’ve talked to hundreds of seniors in college who have told me that they didn’t realize how important college location was until they got to school. But it should be one of the top considerations for students and parents,” said Todd Hoffman, a college researcher and consultant who quantifies the comparative merits of various college locations with his brainchild, the College Destinations Index.

Head of the Class

Using 12 measures, the index, published by the American Institute for Economic Research, analyzes data from more than 290 cities and college towns to identify 75 of the best places in America to go to school. It includes financial considerations, such as cost of living, job opportunities, and earning potential, as well as other factors such as student diversity and the availability of cultural and leisure activities.

The top 75 locations range from college towns with less than 250,000 people to major cities with populations greater than 2.5 million.

Big-city picks include Boston, New York, and San Francisco. Students who decide to live off-campus can expect to pay about $1,300 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in Boston and almost $1,500 in San Francisco — about twice what they would pay in Cleveland or St. Louis. Assuming two students shared the apartment, the cost difference between the expensive and cheaper locations for each of them would amount to several thousand dollars a year.

Despite their pricey profiles, these big cities rank highly because they offer many internship opportunities that are not available in other parts of the country. For students, the question is whether those opportunities will translate into jobs down the road.

“In a competitive job market, employers view internships as something that sets students apart and makes them more marketable,” Hoffman said.

“You’re not going to have as many of those opportunities in rural settings, even if you are attending a great college or university,” he added.

Post-Graduate Plans

High-cost cities also tend to have a high per-capita income, which can translate into higher starting salaries for students who decide to stay after graduation.

Of course, if major cities aren’t to your liking, there are plenty of great college destinations in smaller cities or college towns.

The Columbus, Ohio area, where Sharpe attended college, serves as a headquarters location for internship-rich companies such as Nationwide Insurance, Abercrombie & Fitch, The Limited and Bob Evans, and two-bedroom apartments can be had for under $700 a month.

Prospective students should also consider how career plans fit into a college location. Those contemplating a career in technology will probably have more success finding internships and employment in a place with a strong industry presence such as Boston or the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, while someone considering a career in public service might gravitate to a school near a state capital or in Washington, D.C.

Even an area’s real estate values can factor into a location decision. Hoffman said that with property prices at depressed levels, he’s seeing more parents buy a house or condominium, then rent the property to a child and his or her roommates and perhaps even pay the child to manage the property.

The strategy typically works best in areas such as Cleveland where real estate costs are reasonable compared to the price of on-campus housing. Despite the risk of declining property values — parents who bought at the height of the real estate boom may now be regretting the decision — becoming a child’s temporary landlord could save thousands of dollars in living costs in stable or rising markets.

The CDI’s usefulness goes beyond students, since favorable financial characteristics and amenities that create great college locations can also make the areas prime destinations for retirees, tourists, or people thinking about relocation.

Said Hoffman: “Great college destinations are also often great all-around place to be.”

Marla Brill is a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based freelance writer.

Read on for the lists of best college destinations