City rankings

Most Educated Cities in Delaware

Hockessin ranks #1 in Delaware for most educated cities at 66.3%.

This ranking orders all 11 qualifying Delaware cities by bachelor degree share, computed from the named federal field or time-series described below. It is one of 9 transparent ranking lenses Areazine publishes for Delaware, each answering one direct question from official data. Compare Hockessin's standing against every other Delaware city ranked below.

Data updated 2026-08-21

11
Cities ranked
66.3%
#1 Hockessin
21.6%
Lowest, Smyrna

What this Delaware ranking shows

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates, the CDC PLACES population-level health analysis, and the CMS Hospital Compare quality data, Areazine ranks U.S. cities across more than 19,000 incorporated places, census-designated places, and consolidated city-county governments. State-level city rankings combine these federal datasets to produce intra-state comparisons across demographics, economics, health outcomes, and hospital quality.

Hockessin leads 11 Delaware cities at 66.3%, while Smyrna sits at the bottom with 21.6% - a total spread of 44.7% on bachelor degree share. The top 5 occupy 64% of that range, indicating a wide separation between leaders and the rest of the field.

The median Delaware city in this list sits at 33.1%, 33.2% behind Hockessin. See our methodology for ranking construction, data vintage, refresh cadence, and the federal upstream tables we join, and triangulate via the 8 other Delaware rankings below, cities that lead on multiple lenses are the most robust signals.

Top 5 - Most Educated Cities

Top 5 Delaware cities ranked by bachelor degree share
Rank City bachelor degree share Population
#1 Hockessin 66.3% 14K
#2 Newark 58.2% 34K
#3 Pike Creek Valley 50.7% 11K
#4 Middletown 44% 20K
#5 Glasgow 37.7% 14K

Does bachelor degree share track with city size?

Most Educated Cities vs. population, top 25 ranked cities

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (population), bachelor degree share per methodology 2×2 strategic matrix plotting 11 entities by Population (X) and bachelor degree share (Y), with a crosshair dividing the plot into four quadrants. Large & strongSmall & strongLarge & weakSmall & weak 020,00040,00060,00080,000 10203040506070 Population bachelor degree share HockessinNewarkPike Creek ValleyMiddletownGlasgowWilmingtonBearBrooksideMilfordDoverSmyrna
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (population), bachelor degree share per methodology

Most Educated Cities 11

More Delaware Rankings 8

Reading this Delaware ranking responsibly

Single-metric rankings are useful precisely because they are honest about what they measure. A "highest income" ranking does not tell you that the top-ranked city is the best place to live in Delaware; it tells you that, among cities of population ten thousand and above in Delaware that have a published median household income field in the most recent American Community Survey five-year estimates, this city has the highest such value. That precise definition matters, because composite "best places" lists from real-estate marketing sites and lifestyle magazines often combine income with subjective weights on schools, walkability, and amenities, producing a score whose components are not disclosed and whose ordering is not reproducible. Areazine's editorial commitment is to keep the underlying field, source, and vintage visible so the reader can audit any rank in this list against the canonical federal record.

Cross-checking against other rankings is a useful sanity test. A city that appears in the top ten on three or more different rankings, for example, highest income, most educated, and lowest poverty, is showing a robust signal across multiple independent dimensions. A city that appears in the top ten on only one ranking and middling on the others is showing a narrower signal, often driven by a single statistical artifact (a small population pulling the per-capita measure, a recent acquisition spike inflating median home value, an outlier survey year). The other nine Delaware rankings linked above provide that cross-check at zero extra effort.

Data Sources

Population and economic data from the Census Bureau American Community Survey (2024 5-year estimates). Health data from the CDC PLACES (2023). Ranking computations use U.S. Census Bureau reference geographies. Crime statistics, where referenced, originate from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program (also accessible via the Crime Data Explorer).