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? 

5. Austin, Texas

Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman/AP/File
The moon glows a red hue over the Goddess of Liberty statue atop the Capitol in Austin, Texas, during a total lunar eclipse Tuesday, April 15, 2014. Tuesday's eclipse is the first of four total lunar eclipses that will take place between 2014 to 2015.

Population between 20-29: 21.2 percent

Population 25 or older with a Bachelor's degree: 29.5 percent

Median earnings for Bachelor's degree holders: $45,023

Cost of living index: 93.2

Workers with management, business, science or arts jobs: 45.2 percent

 Unemployment rate: 4.8 percent

Overall score: 70.64

Austin has a high percentage of young professionals, a well-educated population, an affordable cost of living and a low unemployment rate compared to other large cities in the country. In addition to a lively arts and music scene, Austin is home to the headquarters of some major technology corporations such as Dell and IBM. Contributing to the city’s well-educated workforce are 27 public and private colleges and universities in the region, the largest of which is the University of Texas at Austin.

6 of 10

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”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

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.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.