With its infamous nightlife and thousands of good-looking singles in Penn State's student body, State College has been crowned number one of America's Best Cities for Dating 2003.

"It's a huge college town with a transient population," Zack Bean (graduate-creative writing) said. "A lot of kids come together here from similar backgrounds and so they don't run into communication barriers. There's not a lot here besides the university, so people have a lot in common."

A new study by Sperling's Best Places identified the top ten cities in the nation for dating and meeting new people. Best Places President Bert Sperling said that since singles comprise 81 percent of State College's 18-34 year-old population, the town tops the list as having the hottest dating scene in the nation.

Bean said, "It doesn't really surprise me. You have a lot of young people who just left home and are probably single looking to enter into relationships."

Sperling said this study was the first of its kind conducted by Best Places, and was an off-shoot of a study MTV asked them to do on finding dating spots in small towns.

"There were so many places to go, we couldn't do it all in a reasonable time frame," he said. "We used statistics."

Sperling said some of the characteristics examined were percentages of singles, population diversity, comfortable weather and the concentration of young adults.

"College towns beat out other cities because age is figured in heavily," Sperling said. "The lower the average age, the better the dating scene. When you're older, you begin to settle down, you care more about your career," he said.

Ashley Hanifee (sophomore-Spanish) said she thought the ranking was accurate because of State College's bar and party scene.

"There is such a large population of young people here," she said.

Trish McDermott, vice president of romance at Match.com, said although the company's research has not covered the State College dating scene, they have recently studied the 18 largest cities in the United States with the most Match.com members.

"Austin [Texas] was the best city overall," she said. "We based it on 15 criteria, like if men bring flowers, if people call when they say they'll call and how good they are in bed."

McDermott said the top five cities after Austin were Chicago, Las Vegas, Dallas and Atlanta.

"Philly didn't really establish itself," she said. "It was middle-of-the-road with flirtatiousness, low on men giving flowers and below average on men always picking up the tab on dates."

However, McDermott said, Philadelphia was number four for kissing on the first date and the number three city in the "Best in Bed" category. Pittsburgh was not researched.