East Lansing named second best college town in the country

Michigan State University came under fire earlier this year by local officials who were questioning how beneficial the college was to the rest of the city. The university’s reputation also came under national fire for our lackluster football season. It seemed that until recently, only MSU alumni, students and staff were aware of how great the university really is to the people who are networked within it. Now, East Lansing, home of MSU, has been named the second best college town in the nation.

That is until WalletHub recognized the hidden jewel that is MSU’s campus. WalletHub is a financial website also known for quizzes and interactivity with its users, but one of their most recent projects was ranking the top college towns in the U.S, where they used categories of “wallet fitness,” social environment and social and economic opportunities available to students as categories of analysis. That means everything from the cost of living to the amount of “brain drain” was taken into account for the study.

All together the metrics add up to a hundred point scale in which 100 represents favorability of conditions for students. Click here to see WalletHub’s full article and see their “methodology” behind the rankings.

Out of 415 college towns analyzed, East Lansing ranked second – with a score of 66.21 – only behind Oxford, Ohio. East Lansing ranked higher than all other major college towns analyzed, and most importantly, came in well above Ann Arbor, Columbus and Kalamazoo which ranked at 7, 29, and 61, respectively.

A Fox Sports article analyzing the results called East Lansing “a great place to send your kids for college.” We think it’s safe to say that most everyone in the area can agree.