Is Rockford One of Illinois' Smartest Cities?

The career expert website Zippia has just released their list of the "Smartest Cities in Illinois," and you might be wondering how Rockford and surrounding communities fared in their rankings. Well, it's kind of a good news/bad news scenario.

Before we get on with Zippia's list, here's how they arrived at their conclusions:

You may be wondering how does one determine the intelligence of a town? Well, we went to the source of all things demographic data – the Census – to figure out what criteria about a place would identify it as a smart cookie. We looked at the percentage of adults (over 25) with at least a high school degree and the percentage of high school drop outs (aged 16-20) for the 340 largest cities in Illinois with data. We then crunched the numbers and were left with this set of the brightest cities in the Prairie State.

Okay, so the bad news is that only one nearby community broke into the top 100 smartest places in Illinois. Sycamore posted an overall score of 80, with 5.0% of adults without a high school diploma, and teenage drop outs at 1.4%.

Here's how other communities in our area placed on Zippia's list:

Dekalb: 102
Rockton: 116
Roscoe: 130
Machesney Park: 162
Marengo: 166
Loves Park: 197
Rochelle: 213
Freeport: 216
Popular Grove: 219
South Beloit: 261
Dixon: 290
Belvidere: 305
Rockford: 308

Rockford's ranking at #308 is because of 17.4% of adults not having a high school diploma, and teenage high school drop outs at 9.0%. Lake Bluff, ranked as Illinois' smartest city, has 0.2% of adults without a high school diploma, and 0.5% teenage high school dropouts. Sumner is ranked dead last (#340) with 39.7% of adults without a high school diploma, and 71.3% teenage high school drop outs.

Here's the top ten: