The Daily Beast ranks The Smartest and Dumbest college towns in America

Chapel Hill, NC Ranks At Top, Athens, Georgia at Bottom

The Daily Beast released its ranking of the twenty five smartest (and dumbest) college towns in America.

The towns are, from smartest to dumbest:
1. Chapel Hill, North Carolina(Grade: A)
2. Ann Arbor, Michigan(Grade: A)
3. Boulder, Colorado(Grade: A)
4. Cambridge, Massachusetts(Grade: A)
5. Berkeley, California(Grade: A)
6. Madison, Wisconsin(Grade: B)
7. East Lansing, Michigan(Grade: B)
8. State College, Pennsylvania(Grade: B)
9. Ames, Iowa(Grade: B)
10. Amherst, Massachusetts(Grade: B)
11. Ithaca, New York(Grade: B)
12. Columbia, Missouri(Grade: B)
13. Charlottesville, Virginia(Grade: B)
14. Davis, California(Grade: B)
15. Corvallis, Oregon(Grade: B)
16. College Station, Texas(Grade: C)
17. Gainesville, Florida(Grade: C)
18. Auburn, Alabama(Grade: C)
19. College Park, Maryland(Grade: C)
20. Lawrence, Kansas(Grade: C)
21. Champaign-Urbana, Illinois(Grade: D)
22. Norman, Oklahoma(Grade: D)
23. South Bend, Indiana(Grade: D)
24. Kent, Ohio(Grade: D)
25. Athens, Georgia(Grade: F)

Methodology:

After choosing towns where the college or colleges define the community that have a population minimum of 25,000 as of the 2008 Census, The Daily Beast ranked them based on the following four criteria:

1. Bachelor’s degrees per capita for the over-25 population: this measured the relative education of permanent residents.

2. Graduate degrees per capita for the over-25 population: similar to above, but more stratified.

3. Median SAT score for the town’s student population.

4. Voter turnout in the 2008 election: political engagement, whether left or right, has repeatedly correlated with higher intelligence; the one criteria that measures behavior, rather than achievement.

Each category was ranked and weighted equally, with more points given for the best and fewer points for the worst, and then tallied. The Daily Beast then handed out grades on a curve; the top 20 percent got As, the next 40 percent got Bs, the following 20 percent got Cs, and then the bottom fifth got Ds, with the exception of the very last town, which got an F.

Source: The Daily Beast