This City Is the Smartest in America—by Far

Michigan's Ann Arbor nabs No. 1 spot on WalletHub list of most educated metro areas
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 31, 2018 1:24 PM CDT
Here Are the Most Educated Cities in America
University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, Mich.   (Getty Images/tiny-al)

Where do people in the know live, work, and play? WalletHub examines the educational levels in America's 150 most populated metro areas, looking at nearly a dozen metrics in the "Educational Attainment" and "Quality of Education and Attainment Gap" categories—to wit, what diplomas or degrees a metro area's residents have earned, the quality of an area's public schools and colleges, and the racial education gap, among other factors. Way at the top of the list, more than 15 points ahead of the runner-up: Ann Arbor, Mich. Read on for the others rounding out the top 10, along with their scores out of 100:

  1. Ann Arbor (Mich.); 92.6
  2. Washington DC-Arlington-Alexandria (Va.-Md.-W. Va.); 77.4
  3. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara (Calif.); 75.1
  4. Durham-Chapel Hill (NC); 72.8
  5. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward (Calif.); 71.1
  6. Madison (Wis.); 69.5
  7. Boston-Cambridge-Newton (Mass.-NH); 67.1
  8. Austin-Round Rock (Texas); 66.1
  9. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue (Wash.); 66.1
  10. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk (Conn.); 65.9
How other cities ranked here. (The US states with the best, and worst, school systems.)

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