As a midwesterner: Columbus OH, various Chicago suburbs, and various Detroit suburbs should be on your list. Plausibly also Kalamazoo MI and Bloomington-Normal IL.
On the smaller population side, another town similar to Champaign-Urbana IL is Ithaca NY.
I’m sure we looked at all those areas to some degree, though I wasn’t involved in the process that sorted them to ‘not top 30’, so I don’t know what made them look less attractive.
Ithaca specifically is on a list of 14+ cities that Alex classified as one tier below our top thirty: “Moved to backburner; had varying levels of initial interest but also flags; investigated and deprioritized; plausible something could bump them back onto our radar, but seems unlikely.”
As a midwesterner: Columbus OH, various Chicago suburbs, and various Detroit suburbs should be on your list. Plausibly also Kalamazoo MI and Bloomington-Normal IL.
On the smaller population side, another town similar to Champaign-Urbana IL is Ithaca NY.
I’m sure we looked at all those areas to some degree, though I wasn’t involved in the process that sorted them to ‘not top 30’, so I don’t know what made them look less attractive.
Ithaca specifically is on a list of 14+ cities that Alex classified as one tier below our top thirty: “Moved to backburner; had varying levels of initial interest but also flags; investigated and deprioritized; plausible something could bump them back onto our radar, but seems unlikely.”