2023’s Most Expensive College Towns for Students

For today’s ambitious students, turning in 4.0 GPAs are just part of the college equation. This is because some of the most prestigious universities are also in towns and cities where rents for multifamily properties are considerably higher than average.

This article is the result of research into the most expensive college towns and cities for students matriculating in 2023. We’ll describe the typical costs of renting an apartment or other similar multifamily properties by comparing each to the national average cost and discussing student housing’s historical performance.

Since some college towns are more accurately described as cities, the college towns included in this article are defined as areas where student resident numbers are over 5,000 and usually comprise 20% or more of the area’s total population.

We’ll begin with strategies used by some parents to prepare for one of life’s biggest bills.

“An Investment in Knowledge Pays the Best Interest.”

This quote is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, and parents who plan to finance college for their children devoutly hope it comes true.

Many families begin saving for their younger generation’s college education before they begin elementary school, or even at birth…and for good reason.

While the most prestigious universities may not charge the highest tuition, they’re often situated in a city or town with a considerably higher than average cost of living.

What About Scholarships?

Universities assist students with partial or full scholarships, although these are never guaranteed. For example, Stanford University grants financial aid to over 80% of its students.

However, even a full scholarship may not assist a student with the costs of renting an apartment, shopping for essentials, and travel and entertainment expenses.

With these factors in mind, here are some of the nation’s most expensive college towns (or cities) for students attending four-year universities in 2023. Many costs are represented in percentages that are compared to 100%, which represents the national average.

#5 – Stanford, California

Home to Stanford University, the town of Stanford has an especially high cost of living when it comes to multifamily properties. The cost of rental housing in Stanford adds up to a mind-boggling 514% over the national average.

Travel is also expensive for student drivers, as fuel prices tend to run over the national average. Pricing for groceries and essentials are around 43% more than average.

Stanford is considered one of the best research-intensive universities in the world, with more than 67 faculty, staff and alumni awarded Nobel Prizes over the last 71 years.

While its student headcounts are much lower than many state universities with just over 7,600 students enrolled for the 2021-2022 school year, the campus takes up over 8,000 acres.

San Francisco and surrounding towns are home to several other popular universities, including the University of California at Santa Cruz and Berkeley, both with almost equally-expensive multifamily housing.

#4 – Los Angeles, California

Home of the University of California, Los Angeles (otherwise known as UCLA) the neighborhood of West Los Angeles is another expensive destination for students. Around 44,000 students attend classes here annually.

Monthly rents in multifamily properties within two miles of UCLA can run as high as $5,158, as housing costs for the city of Los Angeles come in at 302% over the national average.

The college offers on-campus housing, but costs for room and board (shared with two other students) still run over $15,000 for the academic year. Groceries, transportation and utilities costs are all around 47% higher than the national average.

L.A.’s top-ranked university, UCLA has produced 16 Nobel Laureates, won 120 NCAA championships, and produced athletes who took home more Olympic medals than most rival nations.

#3 – Boulder, Colorado

Boulder is home to the University of Colorado, a public school founded in 1876. Its average student enrollment is around 30,000, with a 600-acre campus. The only other college in Boulder: the Buddhist-founded Naropa University, with an average graduating class of around 300 students.

While Boulder’s overall cost of living is around 167% (compared to the national average, represented by 100%), housing in Boulder is twice as high as the state of Colorado, coming in at 322% while neighboring towns in the state average around 165%. Conversely, transportation and utility costs in Boulder are under the national average.

Students flock to UC-Boulder’s 100+ research centers. The school is also home to the Janus Supercomputer system that can perform 814 trillion floating-point operations per second.

The school’s alumni are equally interesting. They include 18 NASA astronauts, several Olympic athletes, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

#2 – Princeton, New Jersey

Princeton, NJ’s Ivy League university shares 99% of the prestige of Harvard but comes in at slightly more expensive.

Almost every cost of living statistic is higher than the national average. While housing costs are 241%, grocery costs are 115% of the national average while transportation costs are just under 103%.

Princeton University is consistently named one of the U.S. News and World Report’s Best Universities. Three members of the U.S. Supreme Court (Justices Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan) are graduates of Princeton.

If you’re wondering about the origins of the phrase Ivy League, it was adopted in 1954 by the presidents of the eight universities (Princeton, Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Yale and UPenn).

#1 – Cambridge, Massachusetts

Several near-legendary universities, including Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), draw students to this town of around 118,000 residents. Over 49,000 of the town’s residents are students, creating a particularly high student to non-student ratio.

The town’s housing expenses are over 210% higher than the national average, with grocery prices that run about 12% higher. Transportation is more affordable, with bus fares and gas prices only around 4% higher than the national average.

In addition to a draconian acceptance rate of under 4% for 2025 applicants, Harvard has a nearly-endless list of famous alumni that include Presidents John F Kennedy, F.D. Roosevelt, and Barack Obama. Other notables: Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, actor Matt Damon, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

While MIT alumni are not in the public eye as often, more than a few have been involved in making world history. Physicist Richard Feynman was involved in the development of the first atomic bomb while Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin earned his Ph.D in astronautics from MIT.