Master's Degrees
Dartmouth is in Hanover, New Hampshire. Cornell is in Ithaca, New York. Where a school sits says less about it than you'd think.
Dartmouth is in the Ivy League. So is Cornell. One is in Hanover, New Hampshire. The other is in Ithaca, New York.
Neither is anywhere near a big city. Neither is any less of a university for it.
Wrong map, wrong assumption
If you grew up somewhere the best universities cluster in a couple of big cities, it's easy to assume a school in a small town, or in some state you've never heard of, can't be that good. It's a reasonable instinct. It just doesn't travel to the U.S.
A lot of American universities aren't in big cities at all. The ones that are rarely sit in the middle of downtown. The reason is almost boring: American campuses are huge, and the center of a major city is a bad place to put one.
So what do you do out there?
I've visited universities in the suburbs and in small towns, and a lot of them come with what's called a college town.
The town is built around the campus: restaurants, cafes, bookstores, pharmacies, and public transit that runs often, not so different from a big city.
The rent question
The upside nobody mentions
If you don't have a lot of money behind you, living outside a big city can work in your favor. Day-to-day costs drop noticeably.
Now picture a full year of rent and getting around in New York City. That's a lot to put on yourself, and on your family.
