The Ten Smartest Cities in Colorado

We've known for quite a while that Colorado is one of the smartest states in the country.

Because we Coloradans are so smart.

But what are the smartest communities within Colorado?

The folks at Zippia set out to discover the answer to this question, using census data to determine the number of residents with at least a high school education, as well as the dropout total.

The usual suspects — Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs — didn't finish in the top ten. Those that did are mostly near these communities, however. They're mostly small and affluent, with the number one choice also being a prominent tourist attraction.

Continue to see the photo-illustrated top ten, featuring Zippia data, and the aforementioned methodology. To see the original post, which includes a ranking of more than sixty other Colorado places, click here.

Number 10: Parker

Population: 47,515
Adults Without High School Diploma: 2.4%
Teenage High School Dropouts: 2.5%

Number 9: Frederick

Population: 9,636
Adults Without High School Diploma: 3.8%
Teenage High School Dropouts: 0.0%

Number 8: Monument

Population: 6,226
Adults Without High School Diploma: 3.8%
Teenage High School Dropouts: 0.0%

Number 7: Superior

Population: 12,716
Adults Without High School Diploma: 1.6%
Teenage High School Dropouts: 1.6%

Number 6: Greenwood Village

Population: 14,546
Adults Without High School Diploma: 2.4%
Teenage High School Dropouts: 1.3%

Continue to keep counting down Colorado's ten smartest cities.

Number 5: Erie

Population: 19,305
Adults Without High School Diploma: 2.5%
Teenage High School Dropouts: 0.0%

Number 4: Cherry Hills Village

Population: 6,234
Adults Without High School Diploma: 0.7%
Teenage High School Dropouts: 1.5%

Number 3: Louisville

Population: 19,171
Adults Without High School Diploma: 1.5%
Teenage High School Dropouts: 0.0%

Number 2: Castle Pines

Population: 10,626
Adults Without High School Diploma: 1.5%
Teenage High School Dropouts: 0.0%

Number 1: Estes Park

Population: 6,022
Adults Without High School Diploma: 0.8%
Teenage High School Dropouts: 0.0%

Methodology:

Before we could dive into the potential IQs of various places in Colorado, we needed to know which places to look at in the first place. We settled upon any place with over 5,000 people and data available for every criteria.

This left us with 79 places in Colorado.

We then looked at the following criteria to determine the cream from the crop when it comes to smarts:

• Percentage of adults with at least a high school education (Higher is smarter)

• Percentage of teenagers that are high school dropouts (Lower is smarter)

Our data comes directly from the latest American Community Survey from the Census.

We thought this criteria was representative of the current state of smarts with the potential for a place to improve the education levels of the next generation. And it’s not like we are setting the education bar incredibly high — 80% of students graduate from high school nowadays.

In order to determine the smartest, we ranked all the cities for each criteria from one to 79 with one being the “smartest” in any category.

We took the average rank across all criteria, with the place posting the highest overall score being given the diploma for “Smartest City In Colorado."