As graduation approaches, many college seniors are choosing where to start their careers and put down roots.
In a report published Tuesday, job platform Glassdoor and real estate website Redfin ranked the best large cities for recent college graduates based on 13 indicators across three categories: housing affordability, career opportunity and quality of life.
Each city “offers a trade-off in terms of what’s available to new grads,” according to Chris Martin, senior economist at Glassdoor. For example, San Diego, which ranked eighth on the list, boasts a robust job market and high quality of living, but saving for a down payment on a home can take upward of a decade.
New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles are notably absent from the list, which Martin largely attributes to their soaring costs of living. On the other hand, cities in the South and Midwest ranked highly because housing “tends to be more affordable and available” in those regions.
Overall, new grads should “cast a wide net” and “think broadly” about the factors that matter the most to them when deciding where to live after college, he says.
