The US cities where the most adults hold a graduate degree
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About 14% of American adults hold a graduate or professional degree, meaning a master's, doctorate, law degree, medical degree, or similar. In Bethesda, Maryland, the figure is 58.1%, the highest of any US city with at least 50,000 residents, and six other cities are above 45%.
| City | Graduate degree | Population |
|---|---|---|
| Bethesda, MD | 58.1% | 69,397 |
| Brookline, MA | 57.9% | 63,266 |
| Palo Alto, CA | 55.0% | 67,237 |
| Newton, MA | 53.0% | 89,044 |
| Cambridge, MA | 51.2% | 118,796 |
| Cupertino, CA | 48.6% | 58,566 |
| Ann Arbor, MI | 48.0% | 122,036 |
| Chapel Hill, NC | 45.2% | 61,607 |
| Mountain View, CA | 45.1% | 83,732 |
| Davis, CA | 44.5% | 66,978 |
| Berkeley, CA | 42.0% | 120,257 |
| Arlington, VA | 41.7% | 236,254 |
Every city on the list has a single explanation
Bethesda is home to the National Institutes of Health, which employs about 20,000 people, a large share of them with doctorates and medical degrees, along with the Walter Reed medical center and a cluster of biotech firms. Brookline, Newton, and Cambridge sit around Harvard, MIT, Boston University, and the Longwood hospital district. Palo Alto is Stanford. Cupertino is Apple. Mountain View is Google. Ann Arbor, Chapel Hill, Davis, and Berkeley are each dominated by a flagship public university. Arlington sits across the river from Washington and holds the Pentagon and a large concentration of federal contractors.
Massachusetts has three of the top five and California has six of the top twelve. No city in the South outside of Chapel Hill and Arlington makes the list, and no city in Texas, Florida, or the Mountain West does.
Four times the national rate
The difference between these cities and the country is wider than for bachelor's degrees. About 36% of American adults have a bachelor's degree, and the most educated cities reach 85% or more, a little over twice the national rate. For graduate degrees the top cities run at four times the national rate of 14%. Graduate degrees concentrate more tightly because they concentrate around the specific employers that require them, universities, hospitals, research agencies, and law and consulting firms, rather than spreading across a metro area the way bachelor's degrees do.
Arlington is the largest city on the list at 236,254 people, and the only one over 125,000. The others are between 58,000 and 122,000, which is typical of a university town or an inner suburb. Among cities over 300,000, Washington, DC leads at 38.0%, followed by Irvine, California at 31.5% and Seattle at 30.6%.
The full ranking across every US city is on the most educated cities page. The long-run change since 1990 is covered in our study on the cities with the biggest bachelor's degree gains.
Sources
Figures are from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates, table B15003 (educational attainment for the population 25 years and over). The graduate share counts master's, professional, and doctoral degrees as a share of everyone aged 25 and over. Cities shown have at least 50,000 residents. The national figure is a population-weighted sum across states.
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Which US city has the most graduate degrees?
Bethesda, Maryland, where 58.1% of adults aged 25 and over hold a master's, professional, or doctoral degree, according to American Community Survey data for cities with at least 50,000 residents. Bethesda is home to the National Institutes of Health. Brookline, Massachusetts is next at 57.9%, then Palo Alto, California at 55.0%.
What share of Americans have a graduate degree?
About 14.0% of adults aged 25 and over hold a graduate or professional degree, which includes master's degrees, doctorates, and professional degrees such as law and medicine. The most educated cities run at roughly four times that rate, a wider gap than for bachelor's degrees, where the top cities are about twice the national share.
Why do graduate degrees cluster in certain cities?
Graduate degrees concentrate around the specific employers that require them. Every city in the top twelve is anchored by a research university, a federal research agency, a major hospital district, or a large technology employer. Bethesda has the NIH, Cambridge has Harvard and MIT, Palo Alto has Stanford, Cupertino has Apple, and Mountain View has Google.
