Laramie rises to No. 4 in RentCafe college town ranking

Laramie jumped 12 places to No. 4 in RentCafe’s 2026 ranking of the best college towns in the United States, a rise that puts Wyoming’s university city back in a national conversation shaped by affordability, retention and day-to-day livability.

RentCafe analyzed 244 towns nationwide and released its list April 2. Laramie moved up from No. 16 last year and became one of three new towns to break into the top 10, alongside Athens, Ohio, and Amherst, Massachusetts. Bozeman, Montana held the No. 1 spot for the third straight year, followed by Pullman, Washington and Clemson, South Carolina. The ranking favored towns where education, quality of life and affordability lined up, and RentCafe said it removed a potentially biased university score while adding retention rate, a measure it said often reflects student happiness.

That matters in Laramie, where the University of Wyoming and the city around it are closely tied. UW said the climb reflected Laramie’s “blend of affordable education and livability” and pointed to the town’s natural amenities as part of its appeal. The university also said its in-state tuition and fees are around $6,914, a figure that remains well below the national average and helps explain why affordability carried weight in the ranking.

The numbers behind UW also show why the result landed as more than a feel-good citation. The university said its retention rate for first-time students returning from 2024 to fall 2025 was more than 79 percent, up from 76 percent in 2020. Fall 2025 headcount reached 10,819, the first increase after six years of decline, and the school said it graduated well over 2,800 students in the previous year. UW’s institutional analysis office measures retention and graduation by entry cohorts and updates those figures in the spring, with six-year graduation rates defined as students finishing within 150 percent of normal time.

For Albany County, where Laramie’s 2020 census population was 31,407 and the county’s population was 37,066, the ranking is another sign of how much the city’s identity still rests on the university and the quality of life around it. Founded in 1886, the University of Wyoming is the state’s only university and only four-year institution, with more than 80 undergraduate programs and 100 graduate degrees. The new ranking suggests national observers are rewarding not just the school’s name, but the combination of a small mountain city, student retention and a lower-cost path to a degree.