Average IQ in Vermont: Data, Rankings and What It Means

Vermont is one of the most cognitively interesting small states in the country because its above-average cognitive performance is driven primarily by demographic selection and educational culture rather than the industrial or institutional anchors that characterise other high-performing states. The Green Mountain State's estimated average IQ of approximately 102.8 places it at around 15th nationally — well above the national mean of 98, in the upper quarter of states, and significantly above what a state of 647,000 people with no major metropolitan areas, no large research universities by national standards, and no dominant industry sector would typically produce. Vermont's above-average cognitive performance reflects a population that is among the most highly educated, most politically engaged, and most committed to educational investment per capita of any state in the country — combined with demographic selectivity that has concentrated highly educated professionals in a state whose quality of life attracts and retains them despite the economic sacrifices that small-state living requires.

How Is Average IQ in Vermont Estimated?

Vermont's cognitive estimate uses McDaniel's NAEP-based methodology. Vermont's NAEP scores are consistently among the top ten states nationally — a remarkable achievement for a state with no major metropolitan area, no dominant technology sector, and no single large university driving graduate-level educational attainment. Vermont's bachelor's degree attainment of approximately 41.3% is among the top ten states in the country — extraordinary for a state without the pharmaceutical corridors of New Jersey or the federal research agencies of Maryland. Its per-pupil K–12 spending of approximately $21,205 is one of the highest in the country. And its occupational profile — dominated by education, healthcare, professional services, and a growing technology sector — reflects a workforce whose analytical demands are above average relative to the state's economic size.

The statistical anomaly that Vermont represents — a tiny, rural state with no Fortune 500 headquarters, no major military installations, and no world-class research university consistently ranking in the top fifteen states for cognitive performance — is explained almost entirely by demographic selection. Vermont has among the highest in-migration rates of any state relative to its native-born population, and the people who choose to move to Vermont are systematically different from the broader US population: they are disproportionately college-educated, financially secure enough to accept lower salaries in exchange for quality of life, politically progressive, and committed to the kind of community life that small-town Vermont offers. This self-selection process has concentrated a remarkably educated and analytically capable population in a state whose economic size would not independently support it. As explored in the article on average IQ in Montana, remote work and quality-of-life migration are reshaping the cognitive profiles of small, beautiful states in ways that are only beginning to show up in attainment statistics.

Vermont's National Ranking

Regional Breakdown: Vermont's Distributed Intellectual Landscape

The University of Vermont and Burlington's Knowledge Economy

The University of Vermont in Burlington is the state's primary research university, and while it is not among the top research institutions nationally by expenditure or publications, its contribution to Vermont's cognitive landscape is substantial relative to the state's size. UVM's medical school and associated UVM Medical Centre are the state's most important healthcare employer and research institution, with growing strengths in cancer biology, neuroscience, and cardiovascular research. The university's agricultural sciences programmes are directly relevant to Vermont's dairy farming and sustainable agriculture economy. Its College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences feeds Vermont's growing technology sector, and its environmental sciences programmes are nationally recognised for their research on the Lake Champlain ecosystem, climate impacts on forest systems, and sustainable land management.

Burlington's technology sector has grown meaningfully over the past two decades, anchored by companies like Global Foundries — which operates one of the world's most sophisticated semiconductor manufacturing facilities in Essex Junction, producing speciality chips for aerospace, defence, and communications applications. Dealer.com (acquired by Cox Automotive) and Dealer Socket developed into significant tech employers in the Burlington area. The city's concentration of technology companies, healthcare professionals, university researchers, and state government employees creates a professional workforce whose analytical complexity is well above Vermont's agricultural and tourism identity would suggest. Burlington's estimated average of ~105.2 — significantly above the state mean and well above the national average — reflects this knowledge-economy concentration in a city of approximately 45,000 people.

Education Infrastructure: Vermont's Numbers

Vermont's 4th grade mathematics proficiency of 45% — nine points above the national average — is one of the highest in the country and reflects a school system that is genuinely producing outstanding foundational mathematical reasoning across a broad student population. This extraordinary K–12 performance, combined with among the highest per-pupil spending in the country, reflects Vermont's genuine commitment to educational investment as a civic value rather than merely a policy preference. Vermont's high school graduation rate of 91% and its bachelor's degree attainment of 41.3% — the latter among the ten highest nationally — further confirm a state whose educational outcomes across the full K–20 pipeline are among the strongest in the country. As the research on fluid versus crystallised intelligence demonstrates, strong foundational education produces cognitive benefits that compound throughout life — and Vermont's K–12 system is producing those foundations at an above-average rate.

Vermont's Liberal Arts College Network

Vermont is home to an unusually dense concentration of highly regarded liberal arts colleges relative to its population. Beyond Middlebury, the state hosts Norwich University (the oldest private military college in the country, with strengths in cybersecurity and international relations), Saint Michael's College, Champlain College (known for its game design and cybersecurity programmes), and Bennington College (known for its progressive arts-focused curriculum and creative writing programmes). This network of liberal arts institutions creates a distributed intellectual infrastructure that contributes to the state's above-average educational attainment and cognitive performance in ways that the University of Vermont's research output alone does not explain.

Champlain College in Burlington has developed particularly strong programmes in cybersecurity and information technology that have attracted corporate partnerships and created a pipeline of technology graduates who frequently remain in the Burlington area. Norwich University's cybersecurity and intelligence programmes have attracted NSA and CISA attention, positioning the university as a national resource for developing cybersecurity talent — a strategic importance that brings federal research funding and analytical workforce development to Vermont's small state context.

Vermont vs New England Neighbours

Vermont's position in New England's cognitive hierarchy is revealing. It sits below Massachusetts and New Hampshire despite spending more per pupil than either and having higher bachelor's degree attainment than New Hampshire. The gap reflects the scale effects of Massachusetts's extraordinary university density — which generate cognitive spillovers at a scale Vermont's institutions cannot match — and New Hampshire's proximity to Boston's labour market, which attracts commuters and remote workers whose incomes are far higher than Vermont's domestic economy produces. Vermont's median household income of $67,674 — significantly below New Hampshire's $88,465 — reflects the economic trade-off Vermont's highly educated residents accept in exchange for the quality of life, community character, and natural beauty that draw and retain them. Vermont is perhaps the clearest example in this series of a state where cognitive performance reflects educational culture and demographic selection rather than economic productivity — a state where people choose to be less wealthy but more educated and civically engaged.

Global Foundries and Vermont's Semiconductor Surprise

One of the most analytically surprising facts about Vermont's economic profile is that Essex Junction — a small town outside Burlington — is home to Global Foundries' Fab 9, one of the most technologically sophisticated semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the United States. Global Foundries, a major semiconductor foundry spun out of AMD, produces speciality chips at Essex Junction for aerospace, defence, and communications markets that require performance characteristics unavailable from high-volume consumer chip manufacturers. The facility employs approximately 2,500 scientists, process engineers, materials specialists, and manufacturing technologists whose work represents some of the most analytically demanding manufacturing employment anywhere in New England.

Global Foundries' Vermont facility has operated since IBM's semiconductor manufacturing era — the site was IBM's primary semiconductor manufacturing location for decades before being acquired by Global Foundries. The institutional knowledge, engineering expertise, and materials science capability accumulated over more than fifty years of semiconductor manufacturing in Vermont represents a genuine cognitive asset that is invisible in most discussions of the state's economy. The facility's decision to remain in Vermont despite the lower cost of manufacturing in other states reflects the extraordinary density of semiconductor engineering talent that has been built up over decades — talent that cannot simply be relocated or replicated elsewhere. This manufacturing intelligence cluster is a reminder that analytical cognitive complexity in manufacturing is not exclusive to pharmaceutical or aerospace industries — it exists wherever the technical demands of the production process are genuinely at the frontier of materials science and process engineering.

The Vermont Civic Educational Culture

Vermont's high cognitive performance is ultimately most deeply rooted in what can only be called a civic educational culture — a community-wide commitment to education as a public good and a personal value that transcends any single institution or employer. Vermont has the smallest average school district in the country by enrolment — its school funding reforms have repeatedly prioritised equity across districts, attempting to reduce the urban-rural and income-based resource disparities that plague larger states. The state has consistently ranked among the top states for school funding equity, meaning that the children of Vermont's rural Northeast Kingdom receive educational resources more comparable to those of Burlington's suburbs than is typical in American public education.

This funding equity, combined with the quality-of-life selectivity of Vermont's population, creates a school system where even small rural schools are staffed by credentialed teachers and provided with reasonable facilities — unlike the rural school crises documented in West Virginia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. The result is a relatively narrow distribution of school quality outcomes that produces Vermont's consistently high NAEP scores across geographically diverse student populations. This broad-based educational excellence — not concentrated in a few elite suburban districts but distributed across the state — is the most important structural factor underlying Vermont's top-fifteen cognitive performance and provides a model, however difficult to replicate at larger scale, for how small states can sustain above-average cognitive outcomes through committed educational investment and funding equity. As the research on what builds cognitive capacity consistently shows, broad-based, equitable educational investment produces better population-level cognitive outcomes than concentrated investment in elite institutions that leaves the majority of students behind.

What Vermont's Average Means for Individuals

Vermont's estimated average IQ of 102.8 — around 15th nationally — is one of the more genuinely informative state averages in this series, because Vermont's demographic homogeneity and relatively narrow economic distribution means that the mean is less distorted by extreme outliers than most states. There is no equivalent of New Mexico's Los Alamos enclave or Alabama's Huntsville pulling the average far above what the typical resident experiences. Vermont's cognitive performance is relatively evenly distributed across its population — a reflection of the genuinely high-quality education system that serves all Vermont students, not just those in privileged suburban enclaves. For individuals who want to understand their own cognitive profile in relation to Vermont's above-average baseline or the national mean, the Free IQ Test at DesperateMinds provides verbal and non-verbal reasoning measurement in under 20 minutes, giving you a real personal benchmark that your state's strong educational culture cannot provide on your behalf.