Wellesley named 3rd most educated place in America

While I live in Wellesley, I’m not so smart that I ever actually heard of NerdWallet until today. Nevertheless,  this online consumer financial information resource caught my attention by naming Wellesley the 3rd most educated place in America.

Bethesda, Md., and Palo Alto, Calif., finish ahead of us, while Brookline, Needham and Newton all also make the top 10.

Here’s NerdWallet’s take on Wellesley:

Wellesley is best known for its namesake college and for the private business school, Babson College, both of which have been lauded for their education programs. Wellesley College also has the Wellesley Centers for Women, which is dedicated to creating positive social change for women across the world through research and community development. Wellesley High School has been noted for its excellent public education programs. But opportunities for higher education work are not the only draw for Wellesley. Finance, healthcare and biotechnology companies like Sun Life Financial, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Biogen Idec also help Wellesley maintain a well-educated and diverse work population. Incredibly, 80.3% of the population has a bachelor’s degree or graduate degree, and only 2.2% of the population did not finish high school.

NerdWallet calculated its ranking by taking into account % of residents age 25+ who finished high school or have an associate’s degree as their highest level of education, % who completed a bachelor’s degree as highest level of education, % who completed a master’s degree as highest level of education and % who completed a professional or doctoral degree.