These Cities Have the Highest Proportions of College Graduates

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, full-time workers with a bachelor’s degree have median weekly earnings of $1,189, while median weekly earnings for high school graduates are $718 and $515 for full-time workers without a high school degree.

Being a college graduate usually leads to a higher paying job, which is oftentimes found within desirable cities and neighborhoods or in close proximity to them.

When enough college graduates are living in one town or city, the housing market becomes competitive and home values increase, which all homeowners hope for when they make the massive investment of buying a house.

Using the most up-to-date data on over 25,000 American cities, LendEDU found the places that have the highest proportions of residents with a bachelor’s degree.

This can be valuable information for any prospective homebuyer as the cities featured below likely have convenient proximity to high paying jobs and competitive housing markets which should lead to an excellent return on investment when it becomes time to sell down the road.

Cities With the Highest Percentages of College Graduates

To see how a city ranked within only its state, either sort the table on the “State” column or type your desired state into the search bar. 

To be considered for this ranking, a city had to have a minimum of 20,000 residents according to the latest estimates derived from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The data found below derives from a dataset from GreatData that was licensed by LendEDU. GreatData compiles the most up-to-date data and estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, in addition to calculating its own projections based on historical trends, to provide accurate and current household and population data for nearly 30,000 U.S. cities.

Tips for Repaying Student Loan Debt After College

For most bachelor degree holders these days, the price of earning that diploma was not cheap and usually requires some amount of student loan debt.

LendEDU offers a few tips below on how to efficiently manage student loan debt repayment.

Understand the Different Repayment Plans

If you have debt from federal student loans, there are a number of federal student loan repayment plans available to you that could help make repayment as pain-free as possible.

For example, there is a standard 10-year repayment plan, an extended repayment plan, and multiple income-driven repayment plans that set your monthly payments at a percentage of your income.

If you have debt from private student loans, there are not as many established repayment plans but if you are experiencing difficulty with repayment you might have some options for relief. To figure out which you are eligible for and how they impact your repayment, talk to your servicer.

Have a Strategy

There are various repayment strategies that you can implement that hopefully will allow you to pay off those student loans fast. For example, you could pay off those loans that have the highest student loan interest rates first.

Or, you could try making biweekly payments instead of once per month so that by the end of the year you make 13 months’ worth of payments instead of 12. Working for an employer that offers a student loan repayment benefit is also another potential advantage.

Consider Refinancing Your Student Loans

Refinancing your student loans is another repayment option that hopefully will lower your student loan interest rate and/or monthly payment.

You can even refinance your student loans more than once if you are eligible for an even lower interest rate or more favorable terms later on.

Methodology

All data found in this report comes from GreatData. LendEDU licensed the dataset provided by GreatData, which derives mainly from the U.S. Census Bureau. For data points like “Population” and “College Graduates,” the data comes from the most recent U.S. Census Bureau update but GreatData also calculates and combines its own projections based on historical trends to provide the most up-to-date data. 

To be counted as a “College Graduate,” a resident had to have a bachelor’s degree.

For some cities listed in the report, GreatData provided multiple ZIP Codes within the city, with each ZIP Code having its own data. In these instances, we combined all ZIP Code data for that city to provide a single stat line for each city.

To be considered, a city, or all of its ZIP Codes, had to have a minimum of 20,000 residents.

Once each eligible city had a single statistic line for all pertinent statistics, we divided its number of college graduates by its total population to find the percentage of its population that is comprised of college graduates.

See more of LendEDU’s Research here.