7/13/07 - Yahoo published its best cities for your professionals today. The top-ranked cities are no surprise, though one of the criterion is a little suspect.
Yahoo based it’s rankings on the (a) number of Fortune 400 large and Fortune 200 small companies located in each city, (b) the ration of salary to cost of living, (c) cities with the largest number of never-married 20 to 30 year-olds, and (d) cities to which the largest numbers of Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern and Rice grads settled 10 years after graduation.
I agree with the way the Yahoo folks narrowed down the cities to only those with large numbers of successful companies, then further narrowed by the percentage of under-35 year-olds. I was even with them when they chose cities with lots of singles. But they kind of lost me on the final criterion. I find it a bit suspect to place so much weight on where the 1997 graduating classes of six colleges. These are, without argument, great schools. But, there are too many assumptions being made.
First, they assumed that the patterns at these six schools is representative of the patterns at all top colleges, and that the behavior of the graduates at these schools is representative of the behavior of all top graduates at all colleges.  If we could assume that everyone in the 1997 class was indeed a successful young professional, and that they didn’t relocate to the cities they chose simply to be nearer to family (versus to pursue careers), and, of course, that the data provided by alumni is current and isn’t fudged. Then, and only then, might I be persuaded to ignore the fact that studies by The College Board have found that students who are accepted to top-tier or Ivy League schools but chose to attend other colleges are just as successful as students who are accepted and attend Ivy League and top-tier schools.
I might also be able to forgive the Yahoo folks for assuming that merely attending these 6 schools makes your behavior model and worth emulating.
If that weren’t enough, the Yahoo folks saw fit to exclude those alumni that stayed close to school and did not relocate; they chose to focus solely on those who moved away. This seems suspect to me because it assumes they did not simply move back home or take the only job offer they received, or that the careers their counterparts built by staying in their college towns were somehow lesser careers.
I assume that there were some other factors not included in the article that may have led the Yahoo folks to make the decisions they did. But, show me a vacuum and I’ll fill it.
My goal is not to slam the Yahoo researchers, but to make sure that anyone who reads the article does treat this, or any other rankings list, as a roadmap to what they should do. These lists are merely starting points. Check them out. Do more research. Make the decisions that make sense for your circumstances.
Anyway, without further adieu.
- New York City, NY
- San Francisco, CA
- Atlanta
- Los Angeles, CA
- Washington, D.C.
- Boston, MA
- Seattle, WA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Philadelphia, PA
- Denver, CO
Slide show of Best Cities for Young Professionals
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