According to a report published by The Daily Beast today, Boston is the smartest city in America! This is the second year in a row The Daily Beast has done the research, crunched the numbers, and assigned their own civic IQ total for each city. In the first year of the study Boston ranked number three and this year took the title as the smartest city in America.
The report only included metropolitan areas (major cities and their suburbs) of 1 million people or more, using census data, which yielded 55 competitors. The criteria was divided into two parts; education and intellectual environment. The education half encompassed the percentage of residents over age 25 that had bachelor’s degrees and graduate degrees, compared to the overall population over age 25. The intellectual environmental half took into consideration the number of nonfiction book sales, the number of higher education institutions, and lastly libraries per capita.
Boston has also recently ranked #5 in social media savvy cities, and #1 in most innovative cites.
Check out the smartest (and dumbest) below:
1. Boston, Mass.
- Daily Beast IQ Score: 176.68
- 2009 rank: 3
- Area population: 4,588,680
- Bachelor’s degrees: 24%
- Graduate degrees: 18%
- Nonfiction booksales: 7,031,000
2. Hartford, Conn.
- Daily Beast IQ Score: 159.98
- 2009 rank: 6
- Area population: 2,044,004
- Bachelor’s degrees: 19%
- Graduate degrees: 15%
- Nonfiction booksales: 2,263,000
3. San Francisco Bay Area, Calif.
- Daily Beast IQ Score: 156.69
- 2009 rank: 2
- Area population: 6,157,736
- Bachelor’s degrees: 26%
- Graduate degrees: 17%
- Nonfiction booksales: 7,785,000
53. Fresno, Calif.
- Daily Beast IQ Score: 43.29
- 2009 rank: 55
- Area population: 1,344,935
- Bachelor’s degrees: 11%
- Graduate degrees: 6%
- Nonfiction booksales: 626,00
54. San Antonio, Texas
- Daily Beast IQ Score: 40.00
- 2009 rank: 53
- Area population: 2,073,092
- Bachelor’s degrees: 16%
- Graduate degrees: 9%
- Nonfiction booksales: 1,266,000
55. Las Vegas, Nev.
- Daily Beast IQ Score: 3.33
- 2009 rank: 54
- Area population: 1,902,834
- Bachelor’s degrees: 14%
- Graduate degrees: 7%
- Nonfiction booksales: 1,069,000
For more information, check out the original post from The Daily Beast. And just because I know most of you are curious, New York, New York came in at #16.
