Top 10 College Towns in US

When high school seniors mull their options on where to go to college, academics and cost certainly figure heavily—but so, too, does the city or town where they'll be spending the next few years. WalletHub wanted to find the "ideal" place for such pursuits, so it looked at more than 400 cities of varying sizes, examining them across 30-plus metrics in three main categories: wallet friendliness, which includes housing costs, student loan debt, and the price of certain recreational activities; social environment (think share of singles, crime rate, and the nightlife options, breweries, and shopping centers per capita); and academic and economic opportunities, including such factors as each city's higher-ed quality, unemployment rate, and share of part-time jobs. The top 10:

1. Austin, Texas
2. Ann Arbor, Michigan
3. Orlando, Florida
4. Tampa, Florida
5. Raleigh, North Carolina
6. Tempe, Arizona
7. Atlanta
8. Reno, Nevada
9. Charlottesville, Virginia
10. Gainesville, Florida

See how other cities ranked here.