Philadelphia Makes List Of Smartest Cities
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – A new report is reinforcing what Philadelphians have known all along: we're pretty smart.
In fact, according to the research from CreditDonkey.com, the City of Brotherly Love is the ninth smartest city in the country.
And while the research isn't exactly scientific, it does take into account some key factors: the population of college grads, the number of Mensa chapters, the number of library cards per 1,000 people and the number of property crimes per 1,000 people.
Since CreditDonkey realizes not every brainiac has a library card (especially in 2014), that stat was valued at half the weight of the education data, and the number of Mensa chapters was given just half the weight of the library card data.
Crime data was included because "a city isn't 'smart' if there are a bunch of 'unsmart' people living there." That may have hurt us, since CreditDonkey says that while we edged out eighth place Rochester when it came to the proportion of people with a bachelor's degree or higher, Philadelphia has a higher crime rate (and fewer Mensa chapters).
While ninth isn't first, we'll take it – especially since New York City didn't even make the list.
So, what cities are the smartest of them all? San Jose, California came in first, and Boston ranked second. Richmond, VA rounded out the list at 10.
To see the full report, click here.