my hubby is from tyler and it has a city feel to it and its deffinantly not a college town! The city has close to 100,000 residents, but close to 250,000 people reside in the entire area. There are a ton of "feeder communities". There are only a couple of small colleges in the area, like was posted earlier. Tyler Junior College is affiliated with Texas A&M University, but still serves primarily as the community's Junior College. Then there is a division of the University of Texas (UT Tyler). For the most part these are very small colleges though. All in all, Tyler has very few people between the ages of 18 and 24. People tend to move back there eventually though
It's a very nice community, with a considerable amount of business going through there. It has a good school system for kids too. There are 5 or 6 elementary schools (if not more), 4 or 5 middle schooles (6th through 8th grade), and 2 primary highschools (both 5A...ie BIG). There are also several very high ranking private schools around there, but you'll pay almost as much to send your kids to those as you will to send your kids to a top notch University
My hubby graduated from Robert E. Lee Highschool. As for the "rural feeling" to the town...not so much. They very much try to be like a big city. There is a decent sized mall there, 2 large theatres, lots of specialty shops, and pretty much every sort of restaraunt and convinience store that you can imagine. It's really a nice place. They have a bit of a traffic problem, but they are working on that by building an outter loop to divert some of the traffic.
As for Georgetown, it's directly beside Austin (the capital of Texas). It has a fairly low population itself, but it's so extremely close to Austin that the communities tend to mesh together, so there is really no clear cut boundry. It's closer to a college town than the other two. The University of Texas (one of the largest Universities in the United States, if not the largest now, and in the top 10 largest Universities in the world) is right in the heart of Austin, and it's occupants over flow into Georgetown quite frequently. Austin is also becoming a big entertainment, music, and art center for this region of America. It's also considered a mini-silicone valley. Austin has tons and tons of industry, and a semi-large international airport. So by living in Georgetown you still have very easy and quick access to all that is in Austin. The problem there though, is you also get all the crowded feelings of a major city.
As for Fredricksberg, it's like little Germany. That's right in the heart of the hill country, and it's absolutely beautiful. There are all sorts of things to see, and out of all three places it's definitely got the most rural feel to it.
Well, that's all I can think of for the three places. If you have any other questions you can certainly ask away and my hubby can probably answer them. He's a native Texan...big time...like 8th generation...and pretty much knows as much as there is to know about this state. He "cave man" style dragged me here from IL
I didn't mind though.