6 ms·

College towns. Pick some states, and go visit towns with colleges in them. They'll have restaurants and groceries, and those faculty kids have to go to school

College towns. Pick some states, and go visit towns with colleges in them. They'll have restaurants and groceries, and those faculty kids have to go to school somewhere. Internet should be passable, too. They won't be the cheapest small town option, but houses should come in well below a million bucks. The one town you mention, Lancaster, PA, is a model of the type.

D13Fd 4y ago
This is a great answer. The two college towns near me also happen to be home to all the best restaurants, and are both far more walkable than the nearest city's downtown area. Not sure that the real estate is going to be all that cheap, though.
novia 4y ago
please don't price students out of college towns...
- cpach 4y ago
  Doesn’t US students mostly live in dorms…?
  - grapeskin 4y ago
    The first year, yeah. After that, people start moving out. I don’t know anybody who lived in a dorm from the third year onward. But yeah, what poor college students trying to get a start on life and grad students making pocket change really need is some 400k/year tech workers to flood into their town, say “wow! Only 2500 a month!” and make it impossible to live anywhere. Also, dorms are insanely expensive. And wanting to be near noisy, drunk, high college kids as an unaffiliated adult is honestly just weird.
    - cpach 4y ago
      Not really sure what to respond. Should people in the US not be free to move to any town they want? Seems like an odd take IMO.
      - grapeskin 4y ago
        You can move wherever you want. But on a forum where people frequently talk about the harm humans do, I think advising people to move to an area that exists basically for people who are just struggling to start their adult life seems like a bad move. Moving somewhere because you like the scenery, the food, whatever is fine. Moving there because there’s a college while you’re 15 years out of college is just strange.
      - petre 4y ago
        I guess that's how they managed to screw up Creste Butte, CO. Pandemic + WFH, opportunities to move somewhere with nice scenery and not enough infrastructure to support a whole score of newcomers.
    - tallanvor 4y ago
      Residence halls are generally competitively priced, and is often cheaper than comparable housing off campus. Residence halls are more expensive than they used to be, but a lot of that is due to the type of housing that students are demanding. University-owned housing isn't a profit center, it's only priced to cover the costs of providing it.
      - mbg721 4y ago
        Is that really true in college towns? My experience (at an urban university campus that required a year in the dorms) was that the dorms and meal plans were staggeringly expensive, but the cheaper off-campus housing tended to be in older homes that had seen some very hard use as students came and went. So maybe the dorm price would be comparable with a brand-new high-rise apartment, but students didn't really need that.
        tallanvor 4y ago
        Off-campus housing often looks cheaper, but that's because you're often comparing apples to oranges. As you mention, the age of the property and how well it's been maintained often varies significantly. But most places you rent off-campus don't include utilities. --That old house in the Midwest or Northeast might look cheap compared to on-campus housing in August, but your electricity and gas bills in the fall and winter will quickly change your calculations. Another thing to keep in mind is that, on average, students living on campus have higher GPAs, are less likely to drop out, are more likely to finish on time, feel a greater sense of social belonging, and are more likely to participate in extracurricular activities. Those benefits need to be factored in as well. There have been a number of studies about this, here's a summary of one of them: https://studentlife.uoregon.edu/student-success-and-housing-report https://studentlife.uoregon.edu/student-success-and-housing-.... When it comes to meal plans, if you have your own kitchen then yes, you definitely CAN eat cheaper, but I don't know many college students who actually spend much time planning their meals, buying in bulk, and actually cooking the majority of their meals from scratch. Realistically they end up eating a lot of frozen dinners and eating out - especially for lunch when they're on campus anyway. When I look at the school I went to, their unlimited meal plan ends up costing about $9/meal on average, which is a lot, but that's 3 hot meals a day, all you can eat, and you don't have to spend time buying the ingredients, cooking the food, and cleaning up after yourself.
  - mitchellst 4y ago
    Varies widely. Size of school, public/private, urban vs rural location, cost and availability of surrounding housing.
- mmikeff 4y ago
  You'll hear the opposite refrain where I live, as the expansion of the university prices locals out of rented accommodation.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  College students tend to live in apartments or housing focused on college students where few other people want to live because of noise problems. Other people living in other areas of a college town are critically important for the health of a town, or else basically everything cannot exist while the student population is away.
- bkberry352 4y ago
  It's the opposite where I am: landlords raising rates to capture more of those sweet student loan dollars. The policy of making access to credit cheap and ubiquitous for students has led to drastic growth in rents (in addition to a large expansion in college amenities and administration). That's what's pricing out locals: students paying for housing with borrowed money.
- davidw 4y ago
  College towns could - crazy thought - build more housing for everyone who wants to live there. We even have the technology to stack dwelling units vertically to take advantage of scarce land!
cortesoft 4y ago
It really depends on the atmosphere you want. College towns are great in many ways, with lots of interesting things to do and a lot of cultural events. However, a lot of people move to college towns and don't realize/remember what college kids are like... they will be noisy at night, sometimes destroy property, throw parties, do stupid pranks... it isn't for everybody
- davidw 4y ago
  Most of that kind of thing is often limited to a fairly limited area. Worth learning where those areas are, though.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    Yeah, the student ghetto. Regular folks live in the college-town-burbs.
- closeparen 4y ago
  You can always organize with the other homeowners to curtail the college's operations! Seems to be a popular strategy.
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    Slowly suffocate the golden goose! Ever popular indeed.
- antupis 4y ago
  Another option is those towns that are formed around some activity like skiing, hiking or surfing(Never surfed but I think it applies here also). They might be not cheap as some random rural towns but atmosphere and services are very good.
- i_like_apis 4y ago
  I have a relative who lived in Lancaster. She liked it. I visited there once and it seemed nice but I was only there for a few days. Also her house was huge.
smt88 4y ago
Home prices are pretty high in most nicer college towns.
- mitchellst 4y ago
  This is true, but it's on a sliding scale. I grew up in a town in Idaho, 100 miles from an interstate. I've lived in tech cities (SF, Austin) and now live in Ann Arbor. (Which, along with Chapel Hill, is basically the definition of "nicer college town.") So I've seen all sides of this. It's true that housing isn't cheap. The difference is what you get for the cost. What I paid for my house in Ann Arbor would buy a house in Austin—but it would be a run-down, dated, small house without much in walking distance and a "who knows?" school assignment. Here in a "nicer college town," we live on more than an acre just outside town, still have top notch schools, and my wife's commute to her job at the hospital is only 10 minutes. (Far from the partying students mentioned earlier.) Housing values are also a little more stable—a sudden tech downturn could strand you underwater in that Austin house. It takes a lot more to sap demand for housing in a university community, especially one with a big teaching hospital system. Add to that the value of a town having a demonstrated track record of caring about its schools. That doesn't grow on trees. I guess, yes: housing prices are high. Certainly when you compare to towns like the one where I grew up. But if you compare to urban areas and high-end suburbs, then the value-for-money trade is way better, even in really nice college towns. FWIW, I loved Iowa City when we were looking, and that probably would have been an even better money-for-value trade. Wife is a medical resident, so we were picking based on more than just lifestyle, and landed in Michigan.
synu 4y ago
Totally agree on college towns. Just need to make sure you don’t buy a house next door to a fraternity or established party house.
cbanek 4y ago
This is where it's at. College towns are the best. They are the gems. Smaller, but with a large group of people from all over, you get that diversity you probably want. With people from all over, you get great food from all over, languages, neat people, art, etc. Another college town I like is Eugene, or Ellensberg. Flagstaff maybe? Depends on your climate, look for colleges with maybe 10k-ish students? Another one that I can't stand because of the weather is Champagne Urbana. 10 minute drive out from town, and you're in farmland.
- noodlesUK 4y ago
  Like Eugene, Corvallis is very nice. There’s decent food, and houses are a lot cheaper than Portland. It’s a lot closer to Portland on days you want to drive up, which is a plus.
  - cbanek 4y ago
    Yeah, that's about the best. There's a lot of college towns that are within driving distance of a major city (like <2hrs), and that really opens it up. If you want the culture of a big city but small town living, college town! Concerts will go to Portland, and sometimes Eugene, but not always, so you can just go up and see them in Portland for example.
  - bkberry352 4y ago
    Agree, Corvallis rocks. Beautiful weather, decent food, close to cities, mountains, the coast. Not sure where the down votes are coming from, maybe to stop you from letting the secret out?
    - cbanek 4y ago
      Yeah I agree. I honestly love central Oregon. Grants Pass in particular is wonderful. And then down in that Medford Ashland Rogue River Valley area too. US 199 from Grant's Pass to Crescent City CA is possibly the most gorgeous drive in the US IMHO. And Crescent City CA has the redwoods all over, and you can continue to Eureka, which is also nice, and fairly cheap compared to the rest of california. It smells like green and wet there, but not in a bad way. Very little snow. Central oregon literally looks like the shire with the rolling hills and mountains. I'd buy there.
singhrac 4y ago
I grew up in a college town and I can highly recommend. I grew up with kids of professors and because of that (and, of course, my own parents) had a great academic environment. Schools in college towns often punch above their weight. Another benefit is access to cultural benefits that wouldn’t normally be available, like great libraries and concerts and orchestras (often free). Check out Pullman, WA as another example.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
Agree. Still in love with Lawrence, KS (University of Kansas). If you can deal with the weather. :-( College towns often have plenty of live music coming through with regularity, art, people with more open minds? (I don't mean to start a debate with the last point, just my preference perhaps.) Lawrence works too because you're 30 or 45 minutes from a big city (Kansas City) so you can get your REI or IKEA on if you need to. Lincoln, Nebraska is another near me (although I have not lived there) that is within 45 minutes of Omaha. Had lunch in Iowa City and it looked comparable. An afternoon in Columbia, Missouri and it looked appealing as well.
- jcpst 4y ago
  Lawrence is nice, I lived near downtown for cheap, was able to walk most of the time. There was a very active music scene- I was an in-house engineer at one of the recording studios there. Columbia is also nice, but a little more spread out. Ames IA, Tulsa, Champaign-Urbana, Ann Arbor…
- cguess 4y ago
  Columbia's not bad. But it's 2 hours from KC or St Louis, which is a haul for an Apple Store. The airport's not bad actually, but you always are connecting through DFW or ORD, so the layover is just a thing. Flying into STL is still followed by a two hour drive, so never worth it.
- avisser 4y ago
  Athens, GA was an amazing town to live in. Amazing live music scene. Great food. And big enough to have neighborhoods for the undergrads that you could avoid. Living ~1hr from ATL was also a luxury - you fly direct everywhere on Delta.
eatonphil 4y ago
I'm from Lancaster and I don't really consider the city a college town. State College PA is a college town. Lancaster is just a nice small city with a few colleges in it.
- snarf21 4y ago
  I agree it isn't a true "college town" but I think with the gentrification and the art college it feels more like a college town than say Carlisle that also has one main college. I think it also has a lot of the cultural diversity that you'd expect from a bigger college town. But in either case, it is great!
  - eatonphil 4y ago
    Yeah specifically what I mean is that the median age in Lancaster is 33 and the median age in State College is 21. So even if there are schools there the feel is more young adult than college student.
- chucksta 4y ago
  Lancaster would be a different place without F&M. I've always thought college town meant the college supported most if not all of the local population, something like West Chester, the town would still exist without WCU but it would be just like Downingtown then, nothing super special. I think lancaster would be in a very similar spot.
  - eatonphil 4y ago
    F&M is not actually among the top employers [0]. Whereas in State College, Penn State is the top employer by a ridiculous margin [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster,_Pennsylvania#Economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster,_Pennsylvania#Econom... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_College,_Pennsylvania#Economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_College,_Pennsylvania#Ec...
    - eatonphil 4y ago
ramesh31 4y ago
>College towns. Pick some states, and go visit towns with colleges in them. This is pretty much the only answer for the US. Small independent towns have ceased to exist because they have no reason to. But the legacy of land grant universities across the US has left plenty of towns like Gainesville, Ames, Athens, Boulder, Asheville, Chattanooga, Eugene, Laramie, College Station, etc. etc. that are fantastic places to live and have strong real estate markets.
smugma 4y ago
I second this. Close to the Bay Area you have UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis… very different vibes but both will have areas with homes <$1M. Not a college town but also in California are Sacramento, Ventura, San Luis Obispo (CalPoly but I wouldn’t say college town), and San Diego (UCSD but not a college town). The latter three are beach towns if you like temperate climate. Sac doesn’t get too cold but it does get very hot. All have nice downtowns (depending on what you want) and don’t require a car. You’ll have CA high taxes and real estate probably cost double or triple what it would in the mid-West but a fraction of LA or Bay Area.

D13Fd 4y ago

This is a great answer. The two college towns near me also happen to be home to all the best restaurants, and are both far more walkable than the nearest city's downtown area. Not sure that the real estate is going to be all that cheap, though.

novia 4y ago

please don't price students out of college towns...

cpach 4y ago
Doesn’t US students mostly live in dorms…?
- grapeskin 4y ago
  The first year, yeah. After that, people start moving out. I don’t know anybody who lived in a dorm from the third year onward. But yeah, what poor college students trying to get a start on life and grad students making pocket change really need is some 400k/year tech workers to flood into their town, say “wow! Only 2500 a month!” and make it impossible to live anywhere. Also, dorms are insanely expensive. And wanting to be near noisy, drunk, high college kids as an unaffiliated adult is honestly just weird.
  - cpach 4y ago
    Not really sure what to respond. Should people in the US not be free to move to any town they want? Seems like an odd take IMO.
    - grapeskin 4y ago
      You can move wherever you want. But on a forum where people frequently talk about the harm humans do, I think advising people to move to an area that exists basically for people who are just struggling to start their adult life seems like a bad move. Moving somewhere because you like the scenery, the food, whatever is fine. Moving there because there’s a college while you’re 15 years out of college is just strange.
    - petre 4y ago
      I guess that's how they managed to screw up Creste Butte, CO. Pandemic + WFH, opportunities to move somewhere with nice scenery and not enough infrastructure to support a whole score of newcomers.
  - tallanvor 4y ago
    Residence halls are generally competitively priced, and is often cheaper than comparable housing off campus. Residence halls are more expensive than they used to be, but a lot of that is due to the type of housing that students are demanding. University-owned housing isn't a profit center, it's only priced to cover the costs of providing it.
    - mbg721 4y ago
      Is that really true in college towns? My experience (at an urban university campus that required a year in the dorms) was that the dorms and meal plans were staggeringly expensive, but the cheaper off-campus housing tended to be in older homes that had seen some very hard use as students came and went. So maybe the dorm price would be comparable with a brand-new high-rise apartment, but students didn't really need that.
      - tallanvor 4y ago
        Off-campus housing often looks cheaper, but that's because you're often comparing apples to oranges. As you mention, the age of the property and how well it's been maintained often varies significantly. But most places you rent off-campus don't include utilities. --That old house in the Midwest or Northeast might look cheap compared to on-campus housing in August, but your electricity and gas bills in the fall and winter will quickly change your calculations. Another thing to keep in mind is that, on average, students living on campus have higher GPAs, are less likely to drop out, are more likely to finish on time, feel a greater sense of social belonging, and are more likely to participate in extracurricular activities. Those benefits need to be factored in as well. There have been a number of studies about this, here's a summary of one of them: https://studentlife.uoregon.edu/student-success-and-housing-report https://studentlife.uoregon.edu/student-success-and-housing-.... When it comes to meal plans, if you have your own kitchen then yes, you definitely CAN eat cheaper, but I don't know many college students who actually spend much time planning their meals, buying in bulk, and actually cooking the majority of their meals from scratch. Realistically they end up eating a lot of frozen dinners and eating out - especially for lunch when they're on campus anyway. When I look at the school I went to, their unlimited meal plan ends up costing about $9/meal on average, which is a lot, but that's 3 hot meals a day, all you can eat, and you don't have to spend time buying the ingredients, cooking the food, and cleaning up after yourself.
- mitchellst 4y ago
  Varies widely. Size of school, public/private, urban vs rural location, cost and availability of surrounding housing.
mmikeff 4y ago
You'll hear the opposite refrain where I live, as the expansion of the university prices locals out of rented accommodation.
UncleMeat 4y ago
College students tend to live in apartments or housing focused on college students where few other people want to live because of noise problems. Other people living in other areas of a college town are critically important for the health of a town, or else basically everything cannot exist while the student population is away.
bkberry352 4y ago
It's the opposite where I am: landlords raising rates to capture more of those sweet student loan dollars. The policy of making access to credit cheap and ubiquitous for students has led to drastic growth in rents (in addition to a large expansion in college amenities and administration). That's what's pricing out locals: students paying for housing with borrowed money.
davidw 4y ago
College towns could - crazy thought - build more housing for everyone who wants to live there. We even have the technology to stack dwelling units vertically to take advantage of scarce land!

cortesoft 4y ago

It really depends on the atmosphere you want. College towns are great in many ways, with lots of interesting things to do and a lot of cultural events. However, a lot of people move to college towns and don't realize/remember what college kids are like... they will be noisy at night, sometimes destroy property, throw parties, do stupid pranks... it isn't for everybody

davidw 4y ago
Most of that kind of thing is often limited to a fairly limited area. Worth learning where those areas are, though.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Yeah, the student ghetto. Regular folks live in the college-town-burbs.
closeparen 4y ago
You can always organize with the other homeowners to curtail the college's operations! Seems to be a popular strategy.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  Slowly suffocate the golden goose! Ever popular indeed.
antupis 4y ago
Another option is those towns that are formed around some activity like skiing, hiking or surfing(Never surfed but I think it applies here also). They might be not cheap as some random rural towns but atmosphere and services are very good.
i_like_apis 4y ago
I have a relative who lived in Lancaster. She liked it. I visited there once and it seemed nice but I was only there for a few days. Also her house was huge.

smt88 4y ago

Home prices are pretty high in most nicer college towns.

mitchellst 4y ago
This is true, but it's on a sliding scale. I grew up in a town in Idaho, 100 miles from an interstate. I've lived in tech cities (SF, Austin) and now live in Ann Arbor. (Which, along with Chapel Hill, is basically the definition of "nicer college town.") So I've seen all sides of this. It's true that housing isn't cheap. The difference is what you get for the cost. What I paid for my house in Ann Arbor would buy a house in Austin—but it would be a run-down, dated, small house without much in walking distance and a "who knows?" school assignment. Here in a "nicer college town," we live on more than an acre just outside town, still have top notch schools, and my wife's commute to her job at the hospital is only 10 minutes. (Far from the partying students mentioned earlier.) Housing values are also a little more stable—a sudden tech downturn could strand you underwater in that Austin house. It takes a lot more to sap demand for housing in a university community, especially one with a big teaching hospital system. Add to that the value of a town having a demonstrated track record of caring about its schools. That doesn't grow on trees. I guess, yes: housing prices are high. Certainly when you compare to towns like the one where I grew up. But if you compare to urban areas and high-end suburbs, then the value-for-money trade is way better, even in really nice college towns. FWIW, I loved Iowa City when we were looking, and that probably would have been an even better money-for-value trade. Wife is a medical resident, so we were picking based on more than just lifestyle, and landed in Michigan.

synu 4y ago

Totally agree on college towns. Just need to make sure you don’t buy a house next door to a fraternity or established party house.

cbanek 4y ago

This is where it's at. College towns are the best. They are the gems. Smaller, but with a large group of people from all over, you get that diversity you probably want. With people from all over, you get great food from all over, languages, neat people, art, etc. Another college town I like is Eugene, or Ellensberg. Flagstaff maybe? Depends on your climate, look for colleges with maybe 10k-ish students? Another one that I can't stand because of the weather is Champagne Urbana. 10 minute drive out from town, and you're in farmland.

noodlesUK 4y ago
Like Eugene, Corvallis is very nice. There’s decent food, and houses are a lot cheaper than Portland. It’s a lot closer to Portland on days you want to drive up, which is a plus.
- cbanek 4y ago
  Yeah, that's about the best. There's a lot of college towns that are within driving distance of a major city (like <2hrs), and that really opens it up. If you want the culture of a big city but small town living, college town! Concerts will go to Portland, and sometimes Eugene, but not always, so you can just go up and see them in Portland for example.
- bkberry352 4y ago
  Agree, Corvallis rocks. Beautiful weather, decent food, close to cities, mountains, the coast. Not sure where the down votes are coming from, maybe to stop you from letting the secret out?
  - cbanek 4y ago
    Yeah I agree. I honestly love central Oregon. Grants Pass in particular is wonderful. And then down in that Medford Ashland Rogue River Valley area too. US 199 from Grant's Pass to Crescent City CA is possibly the most gorgeous drive in the US IMHO. And Crescent City CA has the redwoods all over, and you can continue to Eureka, which is also nice, and fairly cheap compared to the rest of california. It smells like green and wet there, but not in a bad way. Very little snow. Central oregon literally looks like the shire with the rolling hills and mountains. I'd buy there.

singhrac 4y ago

I grew up in a college town and I can highly recommend. I grew up with kids of professors and because of that (and, of course, my own parents) had a great academic environment. Schools in college towns often punch above their weight. Another benefit is access to cultural benefits that wouldn’t normally be available, like great libraries and concerts and orchestras (often free). Check out Pullman, WA as another example.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

Agree. Still in love with Lawrence, KS (University of Kansas). If you can deal with the weather. :-( College towns often have plenty of live music coming through with regularity, art, people with more open minds? (I don't mean to start a debate with the last point, just my preference perhaps.) Lawrence works too because you're 30 or 45 minutes from a big city (Kansas City) so you can get your REI or IKEA on if you need to. Lincoln, Nebraska is another near me (although I have not lived there) that is within 45 minutes of Omaha. Had lunch in Iowa City and it looked comparable. An afternoon in Columbia, Missouri and it looked appealing as well.

jcpst 4y ago
Lawrence is nice, I lived near downtown for cheap, was able to walk most of the time. There was a very active music scene- I was an in-house engineer at one of the recording studios there. Columbia is also nice, but a little more spread out. Ames IA, Tulsa, Champaign-Urbana, Ann Arbor…
cguess 4y ago
Columbia's not bad. But it's 2 hours from KC or St Louis, which is a haul for an Apple Store. The airport's not bad actually, but you always are connecting through DFW or ORD, so the layover is just a thing. Flying into STL is still followed by a two hour drive, so never worth it.
avisser 4y ago
Athens, GA was an amazing town to live in. Amazing live music scene. Great food. And big enough to have neighborhoods for the undergrads that you could avoid. Living ~1hr from ATL was also a luxury - you fly direct everywhere on Delta.

eatonphil 4y ago

I'm from Lancaster and I don't really consider the city a college town. State College PA is a college town. Lancaster is just a nice small city with a few colleges in it.

snarf21 4y ago
I agree it isn't a true "college town" but I think with the gentrification and the art college it feels more like a college town than say Carlisle that also has one main college. I think it also has a lot of the cultural diversity that you'd expect from a bigger college town. But in either case, it is great!
- eatonphil 4y ago
  Yeah specifically what I mean is that the median age in Lancaster is 33 and the median age in State College is 21. So even if there are schools there the feel is more young adult than college student.
chucksta 4y ago
Lancaster would be a different place without F&M. I've always thought college town meant the college supported most if not all of the local population, something like West Chester, the town would still exist without WCU but it would be just like Downingtown then, nothing super special. I think lancaster would be in a very similar spot.
- eatonphil 4y ago
  F&M is not actually among the top employers [0]. Whereas in State College, Penn State is the top employer by a ridiculous margin [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster,_Pennsylvania#Economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster,_Pennsylvania#Econom... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_College,_Pennsylvania#Economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_College,_Pennsylvania#Ec...
  - eatonphil 4y ago

ramesh31 4y ago

>College towns. Pick some states, and go visit towns with colleges in them. This is pretty much the only answer for the US. Small independent towns have ceased to exist because they have no reason to. But the legacy of land grant universities across the US has left plenty of towns like Gainesville, Ames, Athens, Boulder, Asheville, Chattanooga, Eugene, Laramie, College Station, etc. etc. that are fantastic places to live and have strong real estate markets.

smugma 4y ago

I second this. Close to the Bay Area you have UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis… very different vibes but both will have areas with homes <$1M. Not a college town but also in California are Sacramento, Ventura, San Luis Obispo (CalPoly but I wouldn’t say college town), and San Diego (UCSD but not a college town). The latter three are beach towns if you like temperate climate. Sac doesn’t get too cold but it does get very hot. All have nice downtowns (depending on what you want) and don’t require a car. You’ll have CA high taxes and real estate probably cost double or triple what it would in the mid-West but a fraction of LA or Bay Area.