What is the best college to study astronomy?

Answer 1

Nearly all colleges teach astronomy. Most have a degree program. If they don't, then they probably have a physics program where you can do a subfield in astronomy.

In general, the better universities ar also the better ones for physics and astronomy. If you look at a list of college rankings, the ones at the top will be best for those majors as well.

That being said -- the ones I would put near the top are the better Tech schools (MIT, Cal Tech, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, etc), The Ivy League schools, The "Ivy Equivalents" (Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, Chicago, Emory, Rice, etc), and the better state universities (Berkeley, anything in the Big Ten, Texas, UNC, etc).

If I was forced to pick five, I would pick MIT, Cal Tech, Harvard, Princeton and Berkeley.

Of course, there are good schools outside the US as well. Waterloo or Toronto would be good in Canada, Oxford and Cambridge in the UK.

My advice is to go to the best school that you can get into.