Oregon is home to a lot of colleges, and since Oregon is frequently a lovely place, many of those colleges exist in nice places. But according to Reviews.org, the best place in Oregon with a college is Corvallis.
No, it isn’t Eugene, with its extensive bike path system and picturesque bridges over the Willamette River. Or Ashland, home to a lovely change of seasons and a world-renowned Shakespeare festival.
It’s Corvallis, a town where the biggest event of the year is called DaVinci Days.
According to Reviews.org, the list only contains cities with 250,000 or fewer residents, which is why Portland, home to a million colleges and a lot more to do than Corvallis is not on the list.
As someone who grew up in Corvallis, I can say that the most exciting thing you could do back then was take a trip to Fred Meyer. Now there’s a Trader Joe’s, but going to Fred Meyer probably is still more fun.
Using data from the United States Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the website “analyzed overall population, student population, rental costs, college education rates, transportation access, unemployment rates, and bar availability.”
“From there,” they said, “we narrowed it down further by weighing the cost of living, unemployment rates for 20-24-year-olds, and easy access to the city.”
Amongst all the top state college towns, Corvallis ranks 12th. Clearly this isn’t related to their football team, which in August was ranked somewhere between 68th and 108th in the country.
And then they lost to Stanford this weekend.
Still, there are some things to recommend Corvallis as a college town -- Local Boyz has great Hawaiian food, the campus grounds are full of trees, and the Fred Meyer is really close to OSU.
-- Lizzy Acker
503-221-8052 lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker
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