Boston is the American city that feels least like the American cities students have seen in films, and that is mostly because of its age. It is one of the oldest cities in the country, built before cars, so the centre is walkable in a way that almost nowhere else in the United States is. You can cross most of it on foot in an afternoon, which is not a small thing when you are new and not yet confident asking for directions.
It is also, more than almost anywhere, a student city. Harvard and MIT are across the river in Cambridge, and dozens of other colleges are inside the metropolitan area; the effect is a population that skews young in term time and a city organised around that — cheap food, late libraries, bookshops, and a general assumption that a twenty-year-old with an accent is here to study.
The history is on the pavement rather than behind glass. The Freedom Trail is a red line set into the ground that connects sixteen sites across the centre, and walking it is the standard first weekend. Boston Common and the Public Garden are in the middle of the city; the harbour and the waterfront are a short walk from the financial district.
Transport is the T, the oldest subway system in the United States, which shows in places but goes where students need to go. Most schools and residences sit on a line.
The seasons here are worth planning for rather than enduring. Autumn is the one people come for — the leaves turn across New England through October and the city is at its best. Spring is short. Summer is warm and spent outdoors, on the Esplanade along the Charles or on the harbour islands.
Weekends reach further than you would expect. New York is around four hours by bus or train, which makes it a weekend rather than a trip. Cape Cod and the beaches are closer. And if you want the ordinary American thing rather than the historic one, a Red Sox game at Fenway Park is the cheapest cultural immersion in the city — nobody there is speaking carefully for your benefit.
Two things to weigh. Winter is real — January and February are cold and snowy, and the city keeps running through it, but plan your coat and your start date. And Boston is expensive by American standards, with accommodation the largest part of it.
Studying here. Topstudy works with three schools in Boston. Kaplan Boston Harvard Square, EC Boston and LSI Boston each offer General English, Semi-Intensive English and Intensive English. The choice between them is mostly about where in the city you want to spend your term — Harvard Square and the centre are different experiences of the same city.
Accommodation. Alongside host families, Kaplan Boston Harvard Square places students in Reservoir Towers and Waverly Apartments. A residence gives you your own room and other students in the building; a host family gives you more hours of English a day and usually a longer commute. In Boston that commute is on the T rather than in traffic, which makes the host-family option easier to live with than it is in most American cities.
Who it suits. Students who want the United States without a car; anyone who is more comfortable in a university town than a business capital; and students who want a walkable, historic city that is still genuinely large.
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