Dollars to donuts, the majority of the top 100 have a very liberal liberal-arts college nearby!
I don’t think that has anything to do with it. They pass it off as trending towards “research based” institutions/cities/towns, which the top handful certainly ARE.
I think what is missing is warmer weather towns/cities/schools, because they are outside doing stuff instead of playing games on their computers. They’re also in big cities and have a LOT of dumb people to drag down their scores (think Miami, LA, Dallas, etc.)
It must be a per capita thing, where the towns are just the right size, and the climate is just the right degree of crappiness to enable them to somehow fit into this stupid study.
Bloomsburg, PA? Srsly? Sorry. They lost me at that one.