Penn State might not have the No. 1 football team right now, but according to a survey released at the beginning of the month, it is located in the top-ranked college town in the country.

"It's clearly the No. 1 place to be," State College Mayor Bill Welch said, adding that he is "entirely unsurprised" by the town's ranking. "[Students] had the great good sense to come here. I had the great good sense to stay here ... Who wouldn't want to be mayor of a place called Happy Valley?"

The 2007-2008 College Destinations Index was released Oct. 1 by research group Collegia. This is the second survey of its kind, the first released in 2003, though the company has been ranking university locales for 12 years, said Colette McNulty, Collegia program director.

The study focused on three main categories -- academic environment, quality of life and professional opportunity -- each of which had four subcategories.

State College had the highest individual rank in research capacity with $3,999 per capita, as well as in-city accessibility with 17.9 percent of workers using public transportation, walking or biking. State College also had average-to-high rankings in most of the other 10 survey subcategories.

The College Destinations Index had separate rankings for four city sizes: major cities, mid-size metros, small cities and college towns, like State College, which have populations of fewer than 250,000.

In the 2003 Collegia survey, State College was ranked fourth among cities with fewer than one million people and at least one nationally ranked university. This time around, with a new means of categorizing the towns in the survey, State College placed first.

Eric Woolbaugh (junior-economics) said he thinks the town deserves the honor.

"It's a great atmosphere," he said. "There's a beautiful campus and a lot of people around. You gotta love it."

When deciding which school to attend, prospective students look at reputation, cost and location, so colleges and universities can use the study to promote their schools, McNulty said.
Two Big Ten college towns -- Bloomington, Ind., home of Indiana University, and Urbana-Champaign, Ill., home to the University of Illinois -- rounded out the top three behind State College.

Welch said he has spoken with several students whose decisions to attend Penn State have been heavily influenced by the surrounding community.

"Town and gown work nicely in tandem in being an attractive and relatively safe place to be," he said.

Leah Petrasek (freshman-secondary education) said State College was part of the reason she decided to attend Penn State.

"It's a big enough town that it's not boring, but it's not so big it's overwhelming," she said. "You can focus on your school work and still have a good time."

Annemarie Mountz, a Penn State spokeswoman, was unable to say if State College's No. 1 rank would be used to promote Penn State to prospective students because she said she had not heard of the Collegia survey.

Collegia will release another survey within the next few years, McNulty said.