Bloomington: 2nd best destination

Collegia, Inc. has ranked Bloomington as the second-best college destination in its first annual College Destination Index grading.\nCollegia, Inc. ranked 45 metropolitan cities and regions into three different tiers. The tiers are separated according to the population size of the region. Bloomington ranked second in the third tier, which includes 15 areas with populations below 1 million and at least one nationally-ranked university.\nCollegia, Inc. Program Director Viola Morse said the rankings are important because students consider location as a factor when deciding which school to attend. \n"Students are becoming savvier about stuff outside the University such as jobs and internships," Morse said. \nThe information is also important to corporations who market to college students and to community government leaders who are interested in the student population and the vibrancy they bring to the region.\nMorse said the final rankings depended on how well each university ranked in three different indexes: student population, city characteristics and lifestyle attributes. Each index included approximately 14 categories which were ranked according to statistics from sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau.\nThe student index included categories such as student concentration -- the number of students per capita -- and diversity. The city index included accessibility and proximity to a major metropolitan city. The lifestyle index included categories such as performing arts and museums.\nCollegia, Inc. Research Director George Smith said schools did well in the study if they stayed pretty even throughout the categories.\n"(Bloomington) stayed pretty consistent," he said. "It didn't have anything dragging it down."\nSmith said Bloomington ranked number one in performing arts, which means that Bloomington has the highest amount of performing arts venues per capita within its tier. Bloomington ranked high in student concentration, diversity and accessibility. However, the city ranked low in innovation with only 23.2 patents per capita.\nThe top college towns in tiers one and two were Boston-Cambridge in Massachusetts and Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill in North Carolina, respectively. \nThe ranking is impressive, Jane Gantz, the senior associate director of admissions at IU said in an e-mail to the IDS. Gantz said Bloomington is a great place for students to spend four years of college.\n"Bloomington is so welcoming to the IU students," she said. "Walk down Kirkwood Avenue or Indiana Avenue and you'll see shops, boutiques and restaurants that cater to the students … at the same time there is an energy here that is lovely for those of us who live here year round."\nMorse added that cities in the third tier are often almost entirely occupied by their universities. Gantz said Bloomington is part of the college experience because students venture off-campus for cultural events and volunteer opportunities in the community.\nLauren Miller, a sophomore from Cincinnati, Ohio, said she came to IU because she liked the idea of living in a college town.\n"I wanted to be immersed in college life all the time," she said. "I like that everything revolves around the college. (Bloomington) is small, and everything is about the University."\nGantz said she thinks Bloomington is a fabulous college town and that it has a positive effect on students wanting to attend IU.\n"I see a lot of students who see the town of Bloomington as a great place to spend four years while they're in college," she said. "Students who visit IU and spend time in Bloomington as part of their college visit really see it is a special place." \n-- Contact staff writer Stephanie Susman at ssusman@indiana.edu.