Schenectady, New York’s Union College had for years obscured their location to prospective students, fearing that its lack of diversion and decaying urban core would turn them off.  The fear was and is justifiable: according to the New York Times, the top reason students who were admitted to Union and chose not to attend was the city.  But now the college is embracing its locale, the Times reports:

Unlike Yale University, whose size and global reputation make its lackluster New Haven address almost beside the point, Union and similarly situated colleges know that their locales can undermine their courtship of top students. Schenectady is still a long way from archetypal college towns like Chapel Hill, N.C., or Madison, Wis. And the college still does not provide visitors with the most direct route to campus.

But the college’s Web site now leads parents and their children through some of those formerly mean streets so they can see firsthand the signs of renewal.

“It’s by design,” Matt Malatesta, the college’s vice president for admissions, financial aid and enrollment, said of the somewhat circuitous directions. “The fact is that most students are running late to appointments at Skidmore or Colgate or R.P.I., and they come on campus, they take the tour and get back in their car. They think they know Schenectady, so they don’t give it the time.”

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