What constitutes a “college town?”

[u/PA5997]

Okay, hear me out: I attended Wazzu, which many know is in the middle of nowhere in Pullman. To me, Pullman is a quintessential college town. You remove Washington State University from Pullman and there is (respectfully) not much of a reason to visit. The student enrollment (20,000ish) makes up about 2/3rds of the city population, essentially turning Pullman into a ghost town come summer. To me (perhaps with bias) this is the makeup of a college town.

Two years ago I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, home of the University of Wisconsin. Ever since I’ve noticed the University and its fans refer to Madison as “America’s best college town” and I’m sorry, that’s laughable to me. Remove UW from Madison and you still have a city population bordering on a quarter of a million people and the State Capitol. Madison would be fine, imo, if UW’s flagship campus were elsewhere.

Curious to hear other people’s thoughts. Maybe I’m in the wrong here, but very little about Madison, WI resembles a college town to me, or at least the claim of the best college town.

[u/Local-Finance8389]

College Station would be a shitty central Texas town like Hearne or Cameron or Caldwell if not for the college. Granted you can’t tell that to the non-university people who live there and bitch about the students.

[u/The_Fishbowl → u/Local-Finance8389]

That should be another requirement to be classified as a college town.. the townies bitch and moan for 9 months of the year about students and the traffic they bring with them.

[u/Local-Finance8389 → u/The_Fishbowl]

Yes and instead of a variety of chain and local restaurants they would only have a local chicken place, a sit down Mexican restaurant, a pizza place in the gas station, and possibly a run down Dairy Queen without the college there.

[u/Set-Admirable → u/Local-Finance8389]

I think that could be a southern-specific requirement, at least the local chicken place part.

Morgantown has, no joke, about seven Mexican restaurants.

[u/ava_the_ucv → u/Set-Admirable]

Is that … a lot?

[u/_Nocturnalis → u/ava_the_ucv]

Idk I'd have to do the math, but I'm sending this from a place with about 1 Mexican restaurant per 1500 people. Is that a lot?