A study conducted by the deceptively cool-sounding Space Time Research using data from the hilarious ABS 2011 Census has found Sydney’s smartest suburb ranked by the percentage of its residents who hold a postgraduate degree. Evidently this is the only indicator of intelligence, which is terrible, awful news for the 94.6% of Sydneysiders who don’t have postgrads and look kinda stupid right now.
Balmain’s smug neighbour Birchgrove took the top spot with nearly 17% of residents having a post-grad degree and a chest on which to pin it – amirite Birchgrove mums!? This number probably would’ve been even higher had residents not been exposed to the dangerous levels of stupidity emanating from this boat.
Here are some other important things we can deduce from Sydney’s Smartest Suburbs that might come in handy if you’re house-hunting or looking to land yourself a doctor. And let’s face it, who isn’t these days?
Westmead (16.4%), Waverton (15.3%) and St Leonards (15.3%) all came in the top three and all are conveniently located near hospitals. This same theory also applies to suburbs surrounding other doctor-centric hotspots, meaning that doctors are secretly really lazy and won’t stray too far from their places of work. This, of course, could have something to do with the fact that they work ridiculously long hours and need to live in close proximity to hospitals.
Real talk: hang out in these suburbs long enough and you are guaranteed to receive excellent health care. There’s a PHD joke in there somewhere too if you’re smart enough to find it. Bonus tip: land yourself a paediatrician – always the kindest, hottest doctors – by limiting your search to Westmead or Randwick. Steer clear of Surry Hills and the Sydney Dental Hospital and all GPs. You are welcome!
Breaking news: smart people gravitate towards water views, because of obvious reasons, like the correlation between high educational attainment and income, and also because they need somewhere to anchor their super yachts, obviously dummy. This outcome, however, stands in direct opposition to the well-documented inverse relationship between water views, high income, reality television and having a clue.
The study also revealed that in the last five years there has been a 52.8% decrease in the postgraduate population. Smart people are a dying breed. However, 53.7% of the doctorate toting populous are women who are evidently not destroying the joint but doing it for themselves.
This last one wasn’t in the study, but we’ve observed there’s also a clear correspondence between Sydney’s statistically proven hippest suburbs and its smartest. Observe:
Camperdown – 12.3%
Chippendale – 12.8%
Darlinghurst – 11.3%
Darlington – 12.2%
Elizabeth Bay – 12.3%
Forest Lodge – 14.9%
Potts Point – 9.7%
Redfern – 8.2%
Surry Hills – 9.7%
Faded beauty Bondi and its Junction scored an 8.5% and 9.1% respectively, while Chris O’Dowd’s favourite suburb scored 1.9% and the worst suburb scored 8.7%.
You can find your suburb on the full list here and read a more comprehensive breakdown via The Sydney Morning Herald.
