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Hartford-New Haven Area Ranked Sixth Smartest In America

MICHAEL L. GRILLO

October 09, 2009

The Hartford-New Haven metropolitan area is the sixth-smartest in America, according to an Internet ranking released by The Daily Beast.

The website used two broad factors to analyze the 55 U.S. metropolitan areas with populations over 1 million: "education;" the percentage of residents with college degrees; and "intellectual environment," which includes nonfiction book sales, higher learning institutions and voter turnout.

The Daily Beast describes the Hartford-New Haven area as one of the oldest and smartest in America. The entry reads: "The area is home to the United States' oldest continuously publishing newspaper [The Courant], the oldest public art museum [the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art], and the third-oldest institution of higher education on the continent [Yale University]."

Hartford-New Haven finished behind Raleigh-Durham, San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Denver. San Antonio, Las Vegas and Fresno finished 53rd, 54th and 55, respectively.

The Daily Beast, founded by former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown, is an online publisher and aggregator of news, opinion and entertainment.