<p>D1 attended a summer program at U Iowa, Iowa City seemed like a really good college town to me when I visited to drop off/pick up. When you put 30,000 students in the “middle of nowhere” it is transformed into “somewhere” by their very presence,energy and vitality. At least that was my experience in a similar college situation. Not to mention pop. 68,000 of Iowa City. Not huge, but a lot more there than where lots of people go to school.</p>
<p>On the other hand, though you can get to a lot of places from there, they are about equally unclose: within 2 hours to Des Moines, 3 hours to Madison, within 4 hours to Chicago or Omaha, within 5 hours to Minneapolis or Kansas City. Midwesterners drive these sorts of distances like they are nothing, BTW.</p>