Boston ranks #1 best city for students in the US and #15 globally in the latest QS Best Student Cities. Seoul is the top city globally, replacing London, which is now at #3.
#15 Boston
#23 New York
#41 San Francisco
#43 Los Angeles
#47 Chicago
#70 Philadelphia
#74 Washington DC
#80 Atlanta
#87 San Diego
#89 Pittsburgh
I don’t really dispute their list, but I would note those can also be EXPENSIVE cities to be a student (well, maybe not so much Pittsburgh).
And because of their popularity, I think colleges in those cities tend to be maybe a bit harder for admissions, or maybe just more unpredictable for admissions, than otherwise peer colleges in somewhat less popular locations (again maybe with some at least partial exceptions).
My son has been studying in Berlin this summer, and it hasn’t been expensive at all there. Maybe students should expand their horizons to the global list instead 
I’ve heard some similar sentiments about being a student in Australia–that it can be fun and not that expensive for the living and entertainment parts.
I also know of at least two cases where a US student went to Australia for college, met someone, and now they just live in Australia.
I love Boston, but it doesn’t come close to offering what New York does.
In terms of numbers, there are about 600,000 students attending colleges within the New York city limits while there are about 350,000 attending colleges in greater Boston.
What I love about Pittsburgh is that Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh essentially take over the city, between the hospitals, research and engineering centers, transportation systems etc. Pittsburgh is also more affordable than Boston and NY.
NYC doesn’t have this due to its size. Rather, colleges often “take over” smaller sections of the city…but the city as a whole has a LOT to offer.
Here’s an example of how much more NY has to offer. NYC has 26 museums. The next most in any city on the East Coast is 6. It’s like that for everything. While some cities have a theater district, NYC has Broadway. No one thinks of this, but NYC has great ocean beaches. And you can reach them by subway! Students come back to campus in August. I’ve always thought that the ocean as at its best for that last month of summer and even into the first month of fall. The water is at its warmest and the waves are at their roughest, making for great body surfing. Every major city has pro sports, but NY has 2 pro teams in every sport. The list goes on. And there are lots of other college kids, and they have a way of finding each other.
NY is great and offers unparalleled amenities/activities(worked there for 5 years) but it doesn’t have the same college vibe as Boston (lived there for 12 years but did not attend college in Boston). College students make up a greater percentage of the population in Boston/Cambridge and that shows.
NYC certainly has more of basically everything. The question is whether that actually matters to a given individual.
Each individual has practical limits to how many other people they can have meaningful relationships with, restaurants and bars they can try, and so on. Beyond those limits, there is going to be a diminishing marginal utility to more, and pretty quickly the marginal utility will basically hit zero. In less technical terms, if there is enough of something, then more than enough of that thing isn’t really useful.
As a quick illustrative anecdote, I live in a smaller city, and when I first moved here for grad school, the restaurant scene was not great, and it did feel like we were cycling between a relatively small list of favorites due to lack of options. However, eventually the restaurant scene took off, and at a certain point, I realized there was an ongoing effect where I would read about a new restaurant opening that sounded great, I would put it on our list to try sometime, it would have a successful run, and then it would close, all before we got a chance to try it.
This is an illustration of how our city now has not just enough, but more than enough, of a restaurant scene for our purposes. Of course I am just one individual, and others could be more active in terms of trying new restaurants and do a better job keeping up in my city. But for each individual, there will be some practical point at which there is enough, and beyond that is just a not-particularly-useful more than enough.
OK, so to me, it is quite easy to imagine Boston being more than enough for most students in every significant way. For such students, NYC would then be even more more than enough than Boston. But that won’t actually improve their experience, because it is beyond the practical limits of where more is helpful to those individuals.
But maybe a few individuals would really feel like they exhausted all Boston has to offer students in less than four years. Even saying that feels implausible to me, but that is up to each individual.
Edit: Oh, a quick addendum. When people living in a more than enough city are still feeling a little bored, the obvious answer is to take a trip. Then you are not just getting more, you are getting something very different entirely.
I think some people don’t like traveling and staying away from home much, and obviously there is some cost associated (although I had a lot of fun in some student hostels back in the day), and so want there to be more available to do in their own city, which is fine. But if you like traveling, then I do think this means you need less in your own city, because the rest of the world is available to you as well.
The thing about Boston is that while school is in session (approximately Labor Day through June 1-ish) it feels very much like a college town for the students (and to the annoyance of the grown-ups). There is a lot of cross-pollination among the schools socially that really is unique. New York, Chicago, LA and even DC can’t match it.
That’s beyond all the Boston stuff.
I went to school in NYC and lived there for years. I found that there was a lot of cross pollination among the schools. Frankly I don’t know how anyone who has not been a student in all of these cities could possibly know how unique Boston is or isn’t.
And I don’t know what difference any of this supposed interaction would make anyway. Students are spending 95-99% of their time on their own campus, not running around interacting with students from other campuses.
I grew up in New York and left after college. Went to grad school in Boston. New York doesn’t compare on that dimension. If you’re saying that 90-95% of social life is spent on campus, I would argue that’s not the case in Boston. There are flyers for what’s happening at BU, Northeastern, BC, Emerson, Harvard, MIT and all the rest and people go. One of the first things you ask at these parties is “Where do you go?”
I don’t even know what that means that “NY doesn’t compare on that dimension.” Maybe you were sheltered during your college years in NY and came out of your shell when you moved to Boston. Some of us were out there when we were in college. Regardless, going to a few parties diesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of your time is spent in the campus where you are attending school anywhere.
I do know that there’s no comparison when we’re talking about access to cultural institutions, i.e. museums, theater, live music, etc. I know that there’s no comparison when it comes to the experience of multi-culturalism. By comparison to NY, the Boston neighborhoods, ethnic festivals, and ethnic food are boring. In addition, NY is a global hub, international headquarters to business and finance, home to the UN, home to the publishing industry, home to world class hospitals, a magnet for the visual and performing arts community, on and on. Finally NYC has great ocean beaches with easy access by public transportation. Are you saying that none of these things matter to the college experience?
I live in New England and have family, including college students in both Boston and NY. I grew up and went to school in NY, so I know both places. I’ll take NY, hands down. You’ll take Boston. That’s fine. We all like different things. But to claim that Boston is somehow unique for the college experience is just over the top.
Despite having been in Boston for decades now, I’m still a New Yorker at heart (root Knicks, Giants and yes, proudly Yankees, even here). I grew up there, so I don’t need a lecture from the New York Tourism Board. I’m still not sure how many of these wonders are explored by folks who spend 95% of their time on campus as you claim, so great that its all there, but the advantage of having more stuff that you never use is lost on me. Either you spend more than 5% of your time exploring or you don’t. 5% is not a lot.
You asked for experiences from people who’ve experienced both. Not liking the answer, you felt somehow entitled to comment as to why I may have the opinion I have, despite the fact that the only one of us in this discussion who doesn’t have real life experience as a student in Boston is you. Thanks for the lesson in Mansplaining.
I’m not that wound up about it, and again, this is not an anti-New York rant (I get enough of that here), but I would argue that the college experience is informed more by other students than museums. To that end, using your numbers, you rightly claim that there are nearly twice as many students in New York than Boston. That Boston is less than a tenth of the size of New York speaks to the concentration of students here, which impacts your school experience more than Jones Beach.
Not sure why you’re so agro over this. Opinions are opinions, and I don’t see anyone attacking yours.
A reminder that CC is supposed to be a friendly and welcoming place. Please take the back and forth to pm.
Bonus for parents, when we visited a couple of years ago we found hotels were significantly cheaper than American hotels of similar quality (at least in the cities on that list).
I do think some areas have more interaction between students at different colleges than others, and I think a lot of that can just be a product of practical proximity. If the colleges in question are close enough to easily get between, share local clusters of bars and restaurants, share off campus housing neighborhoods, and so on, it is natural there would be more spontaneous or easily-arranged interaction.
I’m certainly no expert, but my sense is that it is true that Boston college students often experience a lot of that. I happen to know they do in Pittsburgh as well–Pitt and CMU are right next to each other (and actually, you can take classes at either), and then there are more colleges in the same part of the city (known as the East End). And then students from the East End colleges are often living in the same neighborhoods, going to the same bars and restaurants, and so on.
So I do think this is a thing for a prospective college students to consider, if that is there sort of scene at least.