Boston: fifty colleges inside one market

Greater Boston is the densest higher-education market in the country: roughly 300,000 students inside the Orange, Red and Green line corridors.

Three clusters

• Cambridge — Harvard and MIT, plus the hospital belt across the river.
• Fenway and Huntington Avenue — Northeastern, Simmons, New England Conservatory and Berklee within a half mile.
• Chestnut Hill to Waltham — Boston College and Bentley, with Brandeis further west.

Cross-registration economics

MIT students take Harvard classes and the reverse. The Five College consortium moves students between Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire and UMass. Consortia matter when you choose a small college: they let you take the course your college does not offer.

Housing reality

Corporate leasing has squeezed rentals. A guaranteed three-bed shared house, as at Babson or Bentley, keeps more money in the family than a small scholarship.

Job market

Biotech on Route 128, finance on the waterfront, hospitals across Longwood. The region hires locally, which is why a mid-ranked Boston school can beat a higher-ranked out-of-state school for regional employment.