Top 10 US ZIP Codes by Bachelor's Degree Attainment

Bachelor's-degree attainment rankings across US ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, from Census ACS 5-Year Estimates. Rendered server-side from a live SELECT against the PlainZIP zip_demographics table (bachelors_or_higher_pct field).

Research period: 2026-05-28

Compiled by PlainZIP Editorial Team, ZIP Code Data Editors · July 8, 2026

Research question

Across the 33,000+ ZIP Code Tabulation Areas in the United States, which ZIPs report the highest percentage of residents aged 25+ holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and how does that figure compare to the broader national distribution of college-educated adults?

95053

100
90263

100
47405

100
50012

100
66045

100
70803

100
20686

100
39406

100
39217

100
11794

100

What this shows Almost every ZIP at the top is a university-campus area where the small population aged 25 and over is degree-saturated, so the leaders sit at or near 100% rather than spreading out across the chart.

How we built this ranking

ZIPs with more than 1,000 residents are ranked by bachelor's-or-higher attainment, descending, and the top 10 are returned. Every figure on this page is drawn directly from the current dataset (nothing is hardcoded), so when the U.S. Census Bureau publishes a new American Community Survey vintage, the ranking updates on the next page load.

The attainment figure is the ACS share of the population aged 25 and over whose highest completed degree is a bachelor's, master's, professional, or doctoral degree. Rows with a null, zero, or suppressed value are excluded rather than shown as zero, so the ranking never surfaces low-information records ahead of complete ones, and genuine outliers are shown as published rather than silently clipped.

One caution when reading this list. Attainment reflects who chooses to live in a ZIP, not the outcomes of its local schools, and it correlates strongly with household income, age structure, and the metro labor market. ZIPs with very small adult populations can also show wide ACS sampling margins, which is why we filter to ZIPs with at least 1,000 residents and surface population alongside attainment in the table below so you can judge how representative the figure is.

This analysis is fully derived from the current dataset with no hardcoded values, so any reader can reproduce the ranking from the same public source data. See the methodology page for the full data-update process, source vintage, and field definitions.

The ranked top 10

Every row below reflects the current dataset of 10 qualifying records. Figures update automatically as the source data is refreshed.

#	ZIP	City	State	Bachelor's %	Population	HS+ %
1	95053	Santa Clara	CA	100.0%	2,206	100
2	90263	Malibu	CA	100.0%	1,612	100
3	47405	Bloomington	IN	100.0%	4,427	100
4	50012	Ames	IA	100.0%	4,062	100
5	66045	Lawrence	KS	100.0%	2,023	100
6	70803	Baton Rouge	LA	100.0%	1,335	100
7	20686	Saint Marys City	MD	100.0%	1,332	100
8	39406	Hattiesburg	MS	100.0%	1,759	100
9	39217	Jackson	MS	100.0%	1,103	100
10	11794	Stony Brook	NY	100.0%	3,165	100

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ZIP Code Tabulation Areas Reference Files. Figures reflect the most recently published dataset and update automatically when the source agency issues a revision. U.S. Census Bureau, ZIP Code Tabulation Areas Reference Files. Figures reflect the most recently published dataset and update automatically when the source agency issues a revision.

Findings

Top entity in the ranking

The top-ranked record in this dataset is 95053, with a bachelor's-or-higher share of 100.0%. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the U.S. Census Bureau publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.

Distribution shape

Every ZIP in this top cut reports a bachelor's-or-higher share at or very close to 100.0%, so the leaders are effectively tied at the ceiling rather than spread out. These are almost all university-campus ZIP codes, where the population aged 25 and over is small and dominated by graduate students, faculty, and staff who already hold degrees. The more telling comparison is between these campus ZIPs and the high-attainment but non-campus suburbs further down the full distribution. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.

Aggregate context

Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.

Source provenance

The records in this ranking originate from U.S. Census Bureau, specifically the ZIP Code Tabulation Areas Reference Files. PlainZIP ingests the source vintage published by the agency and keeps this page current, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published dataset is reflected here within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and the steps applied to prepare the data.

Why this ranking matters

Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.

What this analysis cannot tell us

Bachelor's degree attainment figures are reported by the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey for the population aged 25 years and over. The percentage represents adults whose highest completed degree is a bachelor's, master's, professional, or doctoral degree. ZIPs with very small adult populations may show high margins of error in ACS sampling, so we filter to ZIPs with at least 1,000 total residents to reduce noise. The top-attainment ZIPs cluster around university campuses (Stanford, MIT, University of Chicago), high-income suburbs of major metros (Palo Alto, Cambridge, Bethesda), and elite-professional urban districts. Cross-ZIP comparisons should consider that attainment correlates strongly with household income, age structure, and metro labor market, a single ZIP's attainment figure reflects who chooses to live there, not the educational outcomes of its public schools.

11794

100
12132

100
12453

100
12459

100
12483

100
12527

100
12864

100
12872

100
12911

100
13678

100

What this shows High-school completion sits near saturation in most top-attainment areas, so the bachelor's-or-higher rate is the dimension that actually separates these ZIPs.

Sources

U.S. Census Bureau, ZIP Code Tabulation Areas geographic database, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs