Zillow names Bowling Green No. 3 most-popular college town in America

BGSU students live and learn amid a city that is safe, affordable and holds multiple personal and professional opportunities

It’s something the BGSU community and alumni have known for a long time: Bowling Green is one of the best college towns in America. Now, Zillow is making it known on a national scale. 

The real estate marketplace company recently named Bowling Green the third-most-popular college town in the United States for 2022, behind top-ranked Tempe, home to Arizona State University, and Smithfield, Rhode Island, home to Bryant University. 

Bowling Green State University students live and learn while nestled in a city that is safe and affordable and provides a number of personal and professional opportunities.

Bowling Green’s top-three national placement – and No. 1 in the state of Ohio – comes on the heels of ranking as No. 1 in the Midwest for the third consecutive year as the public university students would choose again for their education in The Wall Street Journal‘s 2022 Best Colleges in the United States list.

Bowling Green also ranked No. 28 and the top Ohio university town on College Values Online’s 2022 list of the 50 Best Small College Towns in America and the city has been named an Ohio Magazine Best Hometown multiple times.  

Zillow analyzed thousands of ZIP Codes throughout the nation and defined “college towns” as cities with at least a 20% or more share of an area’s population of college students based on 2021 U.S. Census data. For the most popular college town, Zillow leveraged the number of rental listings, median list rent, rent growth and rental page views to create an index for top college towns, with page views given the most weight. 

Tempe’s No. 1 ranking was the second year in a row that the city of more than 184,000 topped the Zillow list. In 2021, the real estate marketplace’s top three most-popular college towns were Tempe; Claremont, California, home to The Claremont Colleges; and Narragansett, Rhode Island, home to the University of Rhode Island.