Why Boulder and Fort Collins Took a Dive in Best College Towns Rankings

When it comes to rankings of the best college towns and cities in America, we've come to expect that Boulder and Fort Collins will wind up near the top.

Note that Boulder finished first in two separate 2014 surveys — one by SmartAsset, the other courtesy of Best College Reviews — with Fort Collins winding up in tenth and fourteenth place, respectively.

So it comes as something of a shock to discover that in WalletHub's new report about "2016's Best and Worst College Towns & Cities in America," neither Boulder nor Fort Collins reached the top forty — and they landed only a little higher than Denver, which seldom shows up at all on studies of the best college communities.

-snip-

Granted, all three Colorado places did better in their respective sub-categories. Denver came in eleventh among large cities (defined as places with populations of 300,000 or more), while Fort Collins was the ninth-best midsized college city (populations of between 125,000 and 300,000). But Boulder only managed to get to number 33 in the small (under 125,000) city division, behind such places as West Lafayette, Indiana, Iowa City, Iowa, Provo, Utah and Laramie, Wyoming.

Read more: http://www.westword.com/news/why-boulder-and-fort-collins-took-a-dive-in-best-college-towns-rankings-8609868