Hey Massachusetts: You Is The Smartiest State in the Country

Original story by Charlene Arsenault

MASSACHUSETTS -- The Northeast appears to be where the smartest Americans tend to be, with Massachusetts at the top of that list, according to a recent ranking conducted by Zippia.

Lexington is consistent with this data, as 97 percent of residents over the age of 25 have at least a high school diploma and 77 percent of residents have a Bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the American Community Survey’s 2013 data.

Zippia ”uses state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to understand career paths for millions of professionals across all industries” and conducts various rankings comparing the states.

“Finding a state with an intelligent population makes sense for both companies and employees,” Zippia said of its latest report, ”The 10 Smartest States in America. “That’s where Zippia comes in; to help you identify those places in America that might have skipped a grade…or two.

Zippia determined its list by comparing demographic data - the Census. The criteria for ranking included finding the percentage of adults with at least a college degree and the percentage of current high school dropouts.

Here are the 10 Smartest States, according to Zippia:

1. Massachusetts
2. Vermont
3. Virginia
4. New Hampshire
5. Connecticut
6. New Jersey
7. Minnesota
8. Maryland
9. Nebraska
10. California