Atlanta Is Officially The ‘Most Educated City In The U.S.’ According To Forbes Advisor

Yeah, you read that right. Atlanta is the most educated city in the entire country! And we’re quite honored to hold such a prestigious title.

Here’s what Forbes Advisor says about Atlanta, the most educated city in the country:

Home to major colleges like Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State University, it’s no surprise that Atlanta is a highly educated city. In Georgia’s capital, nearly 60% (59.28%) of residents hold bachelor’s degrees, while 26.68% have graduate degrees. Atlanta does report a wide racial gap in bachelor’s degree attainment: -22.32%.

How did Forbes Advisor determine the most educated city in the U.S.?

To come up with these numbers, Forbes Education gathered multiple education metrics for the 100 largest U.S. cities by population from the Census Bureau’s 2021 American Communities Survey.

These metrics included:

• the high school dropout rate
• which shows the percentage of adults age 18 and older without a high school diploma
• the percentage of adults age 25 and older with some college, but no degree
• the undergraduate college completion rate, which shows the percentage of adults age 25 and older without a bachelor’s degree or higher
• the percentage of adults age 25 and older with an advanced degree.

If you want more details about this study, you can check out Forbes Advisor’s full report, here! They go in-depth in the gender and racial gaps, as well as give specifics on education ranking systems all across the country.

Where did other cities rank?

The top ten ranking of the ‘most educated cities in the U.S.’ are:

1. Atlanta, Georgia
2. Arlington, Virginia
3. St. Petersburg, Florida
4. San Antonio, Texas
5. San Diego, California
6. Phoenix, Arizona
7. Austin, Texas
8. Cleveland, Ohio
9. Reno, Nevada
10. Raleigh, North Carolinas

We’re kicking the extremely harmful stereotype that people in the South are ‘uneducated’… and we’re kicking it hard!