What's a good university town for a non-traditional student?

This may not be a direct answer to your question but: Linguistics and TESOL are two very different fields. Which are you truly interested in? That seems, to me, to be the first question you need to answer.

I'd be happy to give you some advice that might help narrow your search for linguistics programs, as well as give you some new options to look into. It'd be really helpful to have some further info about your interests and what you plan to get a degree for (what do you want to do with/after it?) As hapax said above, linguistics and TESOL are indeed very different, and the programs for each even more so. A good TESOL program can be completed within a few years, whereas linguistics can take 6 to 10 (about 8 on average). MA's in linguistics can be done in 2, but depending on what you want to do with that degree, and especially where you get it, they often amount to pretty much nothing (unless you're using them for good ammo for getting into a PhD program). What area of linguistics are you into? Various schools specialize in different subfields of linguistics, ranging from phonetics, syntax, SLA, FL, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, cognitive linguistics, historical, semantics and pragmatics, computational, speech pathology, phonology and morphology, and on. I'd be more than happy to help you out with this. Email's in my profile.

BTW, you really should go visit your final few choices. 2 years in a miserable program atmosphere and it won't matter how good the city is. Two years in a miserable place and it won't matter how good the program it. It's worth a few days and a few hundred bucks to get a first hand impression of any grad program.

Rochester falls pretty firmly into the "soulless suburb" camp. If you're willing to explore the entire Detroit-Ann Arbor area you'd probably find enough fun, but it would take work (and a lot of time in the car (don't even think about coming to this area without a car)). Also, the program at Oakland only has six faculty members, which is great if you click with one of them and terrible if you don't. If you do come to check the place out, give me a shout.

Thanks for all of the responses. I know someone else answered this, but I'll confirm... I'm looking to get my MA in TESOL. During my research, I found that the universities in the West Coast and Midwest list this as M-TESOL and the universities on the East Coast list this as Linguistics with TESOL emphasis. What I want to do with this is teach ESL here in the states to adults. Specifically, I'd like to teach at the community college level. I had originally planned to stop my education at the BA level, but found that this limits my options tremendously. I would love to visit all of the places I'm thinking about but I'm poor as dirt and it's just not feasible... Shiny Blue Object, the "Linguistics" program (really, it's a Literature program with TESOL certification) at my school as two professors... It sucks rocks.

I visited Tempe a few months ago for a conference. The area has a pretty heavy 'college student' vibe, lots of bars that cater to that crowd, and while I'd guess it's better than the middle of nowhere, it's still more collegy than you would expect for a university in the middle of a giant city. Of course, if you had a car, you could live elsewhere in Phoenix, but while I was there I could only walk and couldn't get very far.

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/linguistics/ has an excellent linguistics program.

Hi OP, I'm a bit confused. Your post title sounds like you want recommendations for some schools to look into, but you state that you've already picked some places. However, unfortunately, some of these schools are located in non-fun smaller towns. Are you willing to look into some other schools (based on recommendations here), or no? I'm happy to recommend some other places for you to check out for Applied Linguistics, but I'm afraid I won't be much help for recommending MA TESOL programs. Because of this, I hesitate to just throw some names out there, in case you're set on TESOL (and not Applied Ling) or the five schools you've picked out (but are simply wanting to narrow them down by town culture). Then again, many of the schools that have good Applied programs also offer MA TESOL certificates, so maybe I could still help. FYI...Boulder, CO and UT at Austin are both amazing universities with strong linguistics programs (in other concentrations), but Boulder only has a TESOL MA certificate (not Applied Linguistics; this may be just fine for you) and UT does not do Applied Linguistics or TESOL at all, from what I can tell. I strongly recommend that you only choose places that have specific AP or TESOL concentrations/emphases...there's just sooo many great options out there that there's no point in settling for something that doesn't have dedicated department/faculty for what you want. Good luck, and let me know if you decide to expand your search, but aren't sure where to start looking.

There is a http://www.edb.utexas.edu/education/programs/fle/ program at UT Austin, but it is in the Foreign Language Education dept, in the College of Ed, not in Linguistics.