Best 10 cities for recent college graduates

Finding a job after college is imperative for many college seniors and some cities offer more career opportunities than others. As we approach graduation season, NerdWallet crunched the numbers to find the best cities in the US for recent college graduates. Can you guess which city came out on top? 

3. Minneapolis

Jim Mone/AP/File
The Minneapolis skyline rises in the background , behind 'Spoon, Bridge and Cherry' by Claes Oldenburg in the city's Sculpture Garden near the Walker Art Center.

Population between 20-29: 22.8 percent

Population 25 or older with a Bachelor's degree: 29.1 percent

Median earnings for Bachelor's degree holders: $46,525

Cost of living index: 110.1

Workers with management, business, science or arts jobs: 47.9 percent

 Unemployment rate: 5 percent

Overall score: 72.28

Minneapolis boasts the second highest proportion of people between the ages of 20 and 29 of all top ten cities. A high presence of young people and a relatively low unemployment rate are two reasons for the city’s third overall rank in our analysis. The Twin Cities metropolitan area is home to a healthy economy—the Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul region has 19 Fortune 500 companies, the highest per capita mark of all metropolitan areas in the country. Among Minneapolis’ other major employers is the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, which is the largest university in the state.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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