Most Academic Towns/Cities in America

Parents Forum
1

<p>Name the towns/cities with the most academic feel. Not necessarily the ones with the highest concentrations of PhDs but that might be part of it.</p>

2

<p>Palo Alto and many of the neighboring cities in close proximity to Stanford U</p>

3

<p>I don’t know what exactly you mean by academic feel, but Ann Arbor has a very highly educated populous. I would imagine Charlottesville, Chapel Hill, Berkeley, Cambridge, other towns and small cities with highly ranked universities, are too.</p>

4

<p>Ithaca, NY?</p>

5

<p>I really really liked Cambridge…that’s my idea of academic I guess.</p>

6

<p>Ithaca??? Why Ithaca???</p>

7

<p>According to America smartest cities wrt to metropolitan area of 1 million population and more list

  1. Raleigh-Durham
  2. San Jose - San Francisco - Oakland bay area
  3. Boston- Cambridge</p>
8

<p>Madison, Wisconsin</p>

9

<p>Re Ithaca … </p>

<p>When you visit Sedona AZ you are aware of the energy vortexes (vortices). When you visit Ithaca, specifically the Cornell campus, you have the same feeling, only it’s intellectual energy. </p>

<p>Or maybe that’s only me. But I get it every time I drive through the gates. It’s especially strong as I pass the engineering building!</p>

10

<p>

</p>

<p>Because the main “industry” there is higher education. The community is dominated by people who are connected with either Cornell or Ithaca College.</p>

<p>There’s a fairly good collection of brainpower in Washington, DC (please stop laughing) and its immediate suburbs, which are home not only to companies that feed at the federal trough but also to the huge NIH research complex and a substantial chunk of the biotechnology industry.</p>

<p>Schools like the famous Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology in northern Virginia and the smaller magnet programs at Blair and Richard Montgomery high schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, exist at least in part because this is a part of the country where well-educated parents want such opportunities for their children.</p>

11

<p>Jeepers! Ithaca is a no-brainer! Sedona, too, for that matter. I might nominate the Amherst MA area, too.</p>

12

<p>Princeton, New Jersey</p>

13

<p>Boston, Ma.</p>

14

<p>According to Forbes magazine, the communities of 100,000+ with the best-educated citizens are:

  1. Boulder, CO
  2. Ann Arbor, MI
  3. Washington, DC
  4. San Jose, CA
  5. San Francisco, CA
  6. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT
  7. Charlotteville, VA
  8. Durham, NC
  9. Boston-Cambridge, MA
  10. Fort Collins, CO</p>

<p>Among smaller communities, they list Ithaca, NY; State College, PA; and Ames, IA as the most educated.</p>

<p>Of these, I’d say the “most academic feel” goes in a tie to Ann Arbor, Boulder, Cambridge (but not Boston), Charlottesville, and Ithaca. Though Princeton’s got to be in there somewhere, too.</p>

15

<p>During the summer, Wellfleet and Truro MA. You feel like doo-doo if your beach reading isn’t peer-reviewed.</p>

16

<p>Ithaca also has a noticeable community of graduates who remained or returned to the region to raise families, start businesses, run arts programs and so forth. Back to the Land in the l960’s, 70’s. By “noticeable” I mean: relative to the more native population of upstate NY dairy and apple farmers. Also, some of those graduates became upstate NY dairy and apple farmers. Read about Molly Katzen, author of the Moosewood Cookbook, for a taste. </p>

<p>Ditto: Amherst area, including Northampton - in other words, the Five Colleges region of the Pioneer Valley, Western Massachusetts. A famiily friend retired there young (in her mid-60’s) and has spent more than a decade attending top quality performances, lectures and courses for pennies compared to prices in her native NY/NJ metropolitan area, often seeing the same visiting talent. She did say it’s great for an intellectual/artistic retirement, but not to come expecting to find new work.</p>

<p>If you define the area as Amherst that’s small-town; if you include Northampton in your definition then we’re into small city. Either way it fits into the Thread Topic title for Towns/Cities.</p>

17

<p>Re: #6 above.
All the little towns between Stamford and Bridgeport in CT may have some of the best educated folks in the country but for the magazine to choose those 3 particular cities is absurd. If you go 20minutes north of Bridgeport, you’ll hit New Haven but otherwise, I don’t see it.</p>

18

<p>^ I think Forbes just meant “Fairfield County, CT.” Bridgeport, Stamford, and Norwalk happen to be the biggest cities in Fairfield County, and the U.S. Census Bureau designates all of Fairfield County the “Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk MSA” as those municipalities account for almost half the county’s residents. New Haven County has Yale, but on average New Haven County residents have significantly less education than Fairfield County residents who are heavily skewed toward college- and advanced-degree-educated professionals.</p>

19

<p>I was just trying to warn OP about pitfalls of those cities is he/she is thinking of a move, etc…
I mean, you live in a particular city or town - not the county. The living experience -schools homes, ambience - is DRAMATICALLY different in New Canaan than it is in next-door Norwalk.</p>

20

<p>Amherst, Northampton, etc. Mass. (the towns of the 5-colelge consortium.)</p>