America’s brainiest city? According to the personal finance resource site Wallet Hub — it’s Ann Arbor, Michigan.
HLN: “It's home to the smartest people in the country…”
And home, of course, to the University of Michigan.
Now — “smartest” might not be the most accurate term to describe the survey findings. Unless you consider being “most college-educated” the equivalent of “smartest.”
WalletHub used Census Bureau and Labor Statistics data to analyze things like:
- How many adults had a high school diploma, college education, graduate or professional degrees
- Number of doctors per capita
- Number of workers in engineering, science and computer fields
But it seems “America’s Smartest” is a title more than one city can claim — depending on who’s making the list.
Just last year in fact — a different site gave Stanford, California the same label.
The methodology of that survey was a lot different though. The cognitive training site Lumosity actually put residents to the test and ran them through memory and attention exercises.
But there is a common thread among both surveys’ findings — namely, that college towns tended to rank pretty highly. Which is probably not that surprising.
Wallet Hub’s top four were:
- Ann Arbor, MI (University of Michigan)
- Raleigh, NC (North Carolina State University)
- Durham, NC (Duke University)
- Provo, UT (Brigham Young University)
And the least educated? According to the list:
- Rockford, Illinois
- Salinas, California
- Beaumont, Texas
This video includes images from Gsgeorge, AndrewHorne / CC BY 3.0 and Jrissman / CC BY 3.0.
