The Washington Post highlights AIER’s rankings of best college towns and best post-college destinations in a prominent article this week. Author Jeffrey Selingo, former editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, writes about the factors that go into a student’s decision about where to go to college, and finds that the location matters a lot.

The value of a higher education, he writes, is increasingly tied to off-campus activities like internships, volunteer work, research projects and study abroad.

With that in mind, “students either need to travel or go to a school in a place that has a strong and diverse economy offering a multitude of options for experiential learning. This is a big reason why many of the colleges and universities that have improved their reputations dramatically in the past several decades are in cities: the University of Southern California, Boston University and Northeastern, New York University, Miami University, and American and George Washington universities,” he writes.

AIER’s College Destinations Index and Employment Destinations Index are among the rankings that can help students consider the best cities for (and after) college, he writes. See the story here.

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