This Upstate NY city has been named one of the best college towns in America

The beautiful High Falls of Rochester, N.Y. Getty Images/500px Plus Samantha House | shouse@syracuse.

com Rochester, N.Y. — Upstate New York is dotted with unforgettable college towns brimming with school spirit.

And Rochester , a vibrant city with an impressive number of higher education institutions, has just been named one of the best college towns in the United States. Rochester was one of 20 communities included in a roundup of the top college towns in America by Thrillist , a digital publication focused on travel. The Flower City was the only place in college-saturated New York state to make the list, which included towns ranging from Ann Arbor, Michigan to State College, Pennsylvania.

The Rochester area hosts several public and private colleges — including the University of Rochester, the Rochester Institute of Technology, St. John Fisher University and SUNY Brockport. Nineteenth-century statues stand by Rush Rhees Library at the University of Rochester on Wednesday, February 22, 2023.

(AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey) AP For those students, Rochester offers a unique late-night, rite-of-passage eat: garbage plates , a dish created by Nick Tahou Hots that traditionally consists of hamburgers or hot dogs on a mountain of home fries and macaroni salad topped with a spicy meat sauce. Garbage plates are a “big part” of the college experience in Rochester, Thrillist wrote. “Rochester’s confluence of students from the University of Rochester, RIT, and nearby SUNYs at Brockpo.