Iowa is home to Two of the Ten Best College towns in America

Iowa may not have many "big" cities, BUT when it comes to College Towns Iowa dominates the top of the list, which two Iowa towns make the top 10 Best College Towns in America?

Get our free mobile app

College towns are not just for high school seniors to check out and consider moving to, college towns can be the perfect place for you to find work, raise a family, or even retire. Many college towns are booming across the country and people are leaving the megacities, and if you are looking for a great college town look no further than Iowa which has two of the top ten college towns in the country according to bestcollegereviews.org.

On their website, they rank the 50 Best College Towns in America, and in the top ten you'll find Iowa City ranked #9, Iowa City is home to the University of Iowa, and then Ames, Iowa home Iowa State University ranked #5 on the list. The #1 ranked city is Boulder, Colorado followed by Ann Arbor, Michigan, and then Madison, Wisconsin. So what makes Ames and Iowa City so special? Well, the website says this about Iowa City...

"Iowa City boasts a storied literary scene, a community that gives back, and good dining and night life. The Iowa Writer’s Conference, and associations with writers such as Robert Frost, Flannery O’Connor, and Kurt Vonnegut help make Iowa City North America’s only UNESCO City of Literature."

And the website says this about Ames...

"Small town vibes, large employers, and a vibrant night life make Ames a true college “town.” The University itself is nothing to sneeze at either, as the home of the first digital computer, and the nation’s first land-grant institution. Local employers like 3M, the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Animal Disease Center, and the national farmer’s association provide plenty of post-graduate opportunities in Ames."

Shout out to two great college towns located not too far from our Quincy/Hannibal Tri-State area, so what about college towns in Illinois and Missouri, well Champaign, IL is ranked 13th on this list, and Columbia, MO is ranked 29th on this list. Would you ever consider moving to a college town?

LOOK: Here are the best lake towns to live in

Many of the included towns jump out at the casual observer as popular summer-rental spots--the Ozarks' Branson, Missouri, or Arizona's Lake Havasu--it might surprise you to dive deeper into some quality-of-life offerings beyond the beach and vacation homes. You'll likely pick up some knowledge from a wide range of Americana: one of the last remaining 1950s-style drive-ins in the Midwest; a Florida town that started as a Civil War veteran retirement area; an island boasting some of the country's top public schools and wealth-earners right in the middle of a lake between Seattle and Bellevue; and even a California town containing much more than Johnny Cash's prison blues.

LOOK: Here are the 50 best beach towns in America

Every beach town has its share of pluses and minuses, which got us thinking about what makes a beach town the best one to live in. To find out, Stacker consulted data from WalletHub, released June 17, 2020, that compares U.S. beach towns. Ratings are based on six categories: affordability, weather, safety, economy, education and health, and quality of life. The cities ranged in population from 10,000 to 150,000, but they had to have at least one local beach listed on TripAdvisor. Read the full methodology here. From those rankings, we selected the top 50. Readers who live in California and Florida will be unsurprised to learn that many of towns featured here are in one of those two states.

Keep reading to see if your favorite beach town made the cut.