It feels like we’ve now heard from everyone in NESCAC but Middlebury which, of course, is not that far from Quebec.
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A bit of context for the “non PC” aspect would help, too, because depending on the meaning it could seriously impact choices, considering I’ve seen it defined on a spectrum from “I can’t figure out how Americans use personal pronouns” to “slurs are a great form of humor”.
(I also remember the group of students’image of a dead Hispanic child used as a piñata and how their defense went.)
I realize it could simply mean “has ideas that aren’t mainstream at their boarding school”, too, hence the need for context.
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Oh I agree that it is in the middle of no where and north Adam’s is a small city. But it has tons of restaurants, shopping and a world class museum. But there is a lot of confounding of what is rural here. One hour from Portland does not change something being rural. What I think of rural is very different than what anyone has anywhere now between delivery services and public transportation. I went to Bing 30 years ago and without a car that was pretty rural. Nothing to do, no way to get places and no shopping. Not sure anyone would say that now…
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? Students from Middlebury go into Burlington frequently. Not sure anyone is heading across the border on a regular basis…
Will enter Burlington into the “big city” sweepstakes along with Portland, New Haven, Utica and Poughkeepsie NY.
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I think s/he was joking 
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So, let me follow your logic here. North Adam’s with a population of 12,000 is a “small city”, but when you went to Binghamton, which had a population of 53,000 at the time and the combined population of the so-called “triple cities” was 80,000, you were in a rural area. Got it.
Let me point out that the reason that North Adams has restaurants is because it’s in the Berkshires, a major tourist area with Mass MOCA in town, not because it’s a city or in a metro area. But “tons” of restaurants and “tons” of shopping? I’ve been there multiple times including a week’s vacation a few years ago and I didn’t find “tons” of either of those things. What I did find to my surprise is that the Berkshire Mall, the only real collection of retail outlets in the area has closed. What closed the mall is internet shopping. So, it’s the 21st century and the internet has reached into rural America. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not still rural.
[quote=“helpingthekid73, post:59, topic:3688213, full:true”]And if we are considering 1 hour trip reasonable, Albany is one hour away.
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You just pointed out that you didn’t have a car when you were a student at Binghamton. So, a similar student without a car is not an hour from Albany. A student who is truly in an urban area can hop on a subway in NY, or the T in Boston, or similar anywhere in urban America and get anywhere they want in short order, be it an hour or less. That’s not the case in Williamstown, MA.
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Like I said- OP might suggest to the kid that recent alums of the boarding school are a far better source of info than a bunch of random strangers on the internet. We can all argue about what is remote, what is a city, whether a couple of white tablecloth restaurants geared to tourists constitutes eating options for a college kid, etc. But current college students can certainly provide better intel than we can.
I know kids who have ended up in “foodie towns”. Which is great- an omikase tasting experience for $300 a head, a farm-to-table winery experience which won’t admit 18 year old’s, etc. But that often means that between Domino’s and Taco Bell and the “can’t afford it” places there is nothing. Students eat fast food, tourists eat elegant, nothing in between. So if your kid doesn’t like fast food- zip.
OP- Get your kid to get recent intel!!!
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Sounds like North Adams is kind of like Baraboo or Reedsburg, WI. Baraboo and Reedsburg are both towns of around 10,000 souls situated roughly an hour from Madison (a city of about 250k). They are surrounded by farms. I would call them rural.
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Goodness. No. I am saying that all of this discussion is kinda moot. Unless you are in a big city I am not sure the issue with rural vs small town vs small city really matters because the students don’t have much access without cars. Bing is in vestal which is a ways from Binghamton itself and when I was a freshman and sophomore and didn’t have a car I could have been in Alaska for the access to the city it gave. Now that is less of an issue for any of these places since ride shares and delivery services are so common. My son who went to UNCSA in a true medium sized city had zero access to it and felt more isolated on campus than my kid at Williams since there was nowhere to walk to for food. Once he had a car that changed and he took advantage of the city.
Just as a reminder of what the OP posted (it was split from a separate thread they had started about 2 days ago.) Not directed at anyone in particular. Just attempting to reset the discussion. 
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My kids have all had the experience of being stranded somewhere suburbany/exurby because Uber shows ZERO drivers available and the local cab service stops running at 11 pm.
Do NOT assume that every non-major metro has late evening ride share services!
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That description reads like Skidmore/Saratoga Springs to me, but overall to avoid getting lost in definitions, it sounds like OPs kid wants a college town (or larger) that they can walk to
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Yes, or Union/Schenectady, Haverford/Philly, Swarthmore/Philly.
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That’s what I was thinking. I was so sure of it that I actually thought they had said, “walkable” even though now I can’t find that exact wording. I’m also assuming that their child’s boarding school is in walking distance of one of the towns they enumerated.
Bard College lies between Vassar (45 minutes) and Skidmore (90 minutes). There are three little collar towns around Bard which are very accessible via the campus shuttle (restaurants, coffee shops, boutiques, banks, a drug store and a grocery store). My daughter, a conservatory student at Bard, is always on the lookout for Paul Rudd who owns a candy store in Tivoli, NY. On Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings, a special shuttle takes students to and from the Target/Walmart/Sam’s Club in Kingston (about 15 minutes away). And kids occasionally take the 90-minute train into NYC.
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5 minutes by what method of transportation?
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The surburban amenities mentioned can be reached by car in about 11 minutes. Hamilton’s Jitney schedule may offer you further perspective:
Just mapped it out and asked D who is a student there- it’s 9 minutes by car. Hamilton also runs a daily Jitney/shuttle that leaves campus on the hour and stops at a variety of area stores such as Target, Walmart, grocery store, etc.