The 10 Dumbest Places In Indiana For 2023


The dumbest places in Indiana are Westville and Lake Station for 2023 based on Saturday Night Science.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that some places in the Hoosier State have a larger percent of their population that never graduated from high school.

While the emphasis on going to college might be overblown, the fact is that not graduating from high school puts you at a significant disadvantage on average. Educational attainment might not be the best way to measure one person’s intelligence, but it does shine a light on the state.

We will use Saturday Night Science to determine what places in Indiana have the highest percentage of adults without a high school degree.

A recent study we published found that Indiana is actually the 19th smartest state in the United States, with an average IQ of 100.

But that doesn’t mean that a few cities in Indiana are a bit slower than others due to a lack of basic education.

After crunching the numbers, we ranked the ten dumbest cities in the Hoosier State.

Don’t freak out.

Some places are just smarter than others, but that says nothing about the character of the people living there. It’s another data point a real estate agent would never tell you.

For this ranking, we only looked at cities with populations greater than 5,000, leaving us 116 cities in Indiana to rank. You can take a look at the data below.

For more Indiana reading, check out:


Table Of Contents: Top Ten | Methodology | Summary | Table


The 10 Dumbest Places In Indiana For 2023

Westville, IN

Source: Wikipedia User Chris Light at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0
Overall SnackAbility

7
/10
Population: 6,062
% Adult High School Dropout: 24.0%
% Highly Educated: 5.0%
More on Westville:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Lake Station, IN

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10
Population: 13,292
% Adult High School Dropout: 22.0%
% Highly Educated: 8.0%
More on Lake Station:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

East Chicago, IN

Source: Wikipedia User Dennisyerger84 | GFDL
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10
Population: 26,502
% Adult High School Dropout: 27.0%
% Highly Educated: 10.0%
More on East Chicago:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Logansport, IN

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10
Population: 18,471
% Adult High School Dropout: 22.0%
% Highly Educated: 9.0%
More on Logansport:  Cost Of Living

Kendallville, IN

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

6
/10
Population: 9,926
% Adult High School Dropout: 19.0%
% Highly Educated: 10.0%
More on Kendallville:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Overall SnackAbility

4
/10
Population: 7,203
% Adult High School Dropout: 23.0%
% Highly Educated: 12.0%
More on Scottsburg:  Cost Of Living

Frankfort, IN

Source: Wikipedia User Paul J Everett | CC BY 2.0
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10
Population: 16,134
% Adult High School Dropout: 21.0%
% Highly Educated: 12.0%
More on Frankfort:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Brazil, IN

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

4
/10
Population: 8,320
% Adult High School Dropout: 16.0%
% Highly Educated: 9.0%
More on Brazil:  Cost Of Living

Huntingburg, IN

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

6
/10
Population: 6,534
% Adult High School Dropout: 23.0%
% Highly Educated: 14.0%
More on Huntingburg:  Cost Of Living | Crime Report

Martinsville, IN

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

4
/10
Population: 11,848
% Adult High School Dropout: 17.0%
% Highly Educated: 11.0%
More on Martinsville:  Cost Of Living

Methodology: How we determined the dumbest cities in the Hoosier State

We realize that formal education is only part of it when it comes to being intelligent, but on the other hand, knowing the difference between they’re, their, and there is always going to make you look pretty stupid.

So, we narrowed down our criteria to focus on a city’s educational opportunities and what percentage of the population takes advantage of those opportunities.

In short, we came up with these criteria to determine the dumbest cities in Indiana:

  • % of the city’s population with less than a high school education (Age 25+)
  • % of city’s population with a college degree (Age 25+)

We got the data from the U.S. Census 2017-2021 American Community Survey.

Then, our algorithm generates a rank for each place in these categories. After crunching all the numbers, a ranking of the cities in Indiana from dumbest to brightest.

For this ranking, we used every Indiana city with at least 5,000 residents. We updated this article for 2023, and it’s our tenth time ranking the dumbest cities in Indiana.

There You Have It – Now That You’re Asleep

If you’re measuring the locations in Indiana where there are a high number of dropouts and adults who never received a formal education, this is an accurate ranking.

If you’re also curious enough, here are the smartest places in Indiana, according to science:

  1. Carmel
  2. West Lafayette
  3. Zionsville

For more Indiana reading, check out:

Detailed List Of The Dumbest Cities In Indiana For 2023

Rank City Population
1 Westville, IN 6,062
2 Lake Station, IN 13,292
3 East Chicago, IN 26,502
4 Logansport, IN 18,471
5 Kendallville, IN 9,926
6 Scottsburg, IN 7,203
7 Frankfort, IN 16,134
8 Brazil, IN 8,320
9 Huntingburg, IN 6,534
10 Martinsville, IN 11,848
11 Connersville, IN 13,556
12 Elkhart, IN 53,838
13 Salem, IN 6,276
14 Nappanee, IN 7,132
15 Peru, IN 11,123
16 Hammond, IN 77,491
17 Washington, IN 12,015
18 Portland, IN 6,334
19 Marion, IN 27,757
20 Vincennes, IN 16,892
21 Linton, IN 5,155
22 Plymouth, IN 10,209
23 Rushville, IN 6,289
24 Rensselaer, IN 5,963
25 Shelbyville, IN 19,710
26 Gary, IN 69,739
27 Seymour, IN 21,192
28 Garrett, IN 6,592
29 Princeton, IN 8,337
30 North Vernon, IN 6,836
31 Winchester, IN 5,016
32 Crawfordsville, IN 16,279
33 Richmond, IN 35,854
34 Lawrenceburg, IN 5,083
35 Clarksville, IN 22,169
36 Mooresville, IN 9,429
37 Beech Grove, IN 15,202
38 Monticello, IN 5,508
39 Anderson, IN 54,459
40 Kokomo, IN 59,263
41 Elwood, IN 8,295
42 New Castle, IN 17,465
43 Goshen, IN 34,792
44 Greencastle, IN 9,980
45 La Porte, IN 21,993
46 Bedford, IN 13,726
47 New Albany, IN 37,350
48 Alexandria, IN 5,120
49 Huntington, IN 17,018
50 Portage, IN 37,540
51 Decatur, IN 9,630
52 Boonville, IN 6,662
53 Wabash, IN 10,420
54 Charlestown, IN 7,859
55 Terre Haute, IN 58,450
56 Bluffton, IN 10,548
57 Tipton, IN 5,211
58 Indianapolis, IN 880,104
59 Madison, IN 12,227
60 New Haven, IN 15,922
61 Evansville, IN 117,184
62 Greensburg, IN 11,573
63 Angola, IN 8,916
64 Warsaw, IN 15,905
65 South Bend, IN 102,786
66 Mishawaka, IN 50,823
67 Lebanon, IN 17,196
68 Rochester, IN 6,248
69 North Manchester, IN 5,269
70 Franklin, IN 25,112
71 Muncie, IN 65,571
72 Merrillville, IN 36,196
73 Lawrence, IN 49,048
74 Fort Wayne, IN 262,676
75 Mount Vernon, IN 6,861
76 Cedar Lake, IN 13,725
77 Sellersburg, IN 9,686
78 Greenfield, IN 23,024
79 Hobart, IN 29,516
80 Lowell, IN 10,569
81 Jeffersonville, IN 49,178
82 Lafayette, IN 70,928
83 Speedway, IN 13,613
84 Jasper, IN 16,231
85 Auburn, IN 13,281
86 New Whiteland, IN 5,565
87 Crown Point, IN 33,518
88 Columbus, IN 50,718
89 Griffith, IN 16,213
90 Plainfield, IN 34,311
91 Greenwood, IN 62,914
92 Batesville, IN 7,204
93 Danville, IN 10,424
94 Dyer, IN 16,422
95 Porter, IN 5,175
96 Cicero, IN 5,289
97 Schererville, IN 29,381
98 Cumberland, IN 5,860
99 Valparaiso, IN 33,820
100 Chesterton, IN 14,045
About Nick Johnson

Nick Johnson earned his masters in Business Administration from the Drucker School At Claremont Graduate University. He has written for 39 publications across the country and ran the media relations department at Movoto, a real estate portal based in San Francisco. He has been featured in over 500 publications as an expert in real estate and as an authority on real estate trends.

Nick's the creator of the HomeSnacks YouTube channel that now has over 260,000 subscribers and is an excellent source to learn about different parts of the country.

12 thoughts on “The 10 Dumbest Places In Indiana For 2023

  1. Bullshit! Brazil is NOT that stupid! Terre haute is by far and away the single most stupid ass city in Indiana. You all need to re-evaluate your methodology

  2. The population of Westville is only 5200 when you include the prison population. It’s a fact….check it out.

  3. I do not understand the need of the media to post negative things about a person’s hometown or state. Why couldn’t they post something like the 10 smartest cities?

  4. Don’t know where you get your statistics but you better check them a little closer. There hasn’t been a Brazil high school for many many many years. LOL

  5. I think the criteria violates the premise. When cities like Terre Haute use federal grant money to create what amount to virtual holding pens for students who would otherwise drop out of high school and keep them around long enough to hand them an anything-but-earned diploma, the data is highly misleading.

  6. Brazil …sin city… Bag chasers , incest, prison hoppen ,meth dealers , so called job hoppers lmao ik I live there …… Keep stuff chained up on the porch .

  7. Welcome to Indiana. What might as well be called the white trash capital of the Midwest because of the white trash behavior of so many of its citizens. Add in generations of familial incest, high alcohol usage, heavy drug usage, and a total lack of education. Not to mention a lack of dedication towards getting an education within generations of families which is a large part of the problem in Indiana and why the state is going backwards. Add in the fact that about 30% of the population if not more is severely overweight and has white trash tendencies as well. When you look at the lack of education, overweight people, drug and alcohol abuse and lack of self-respect it explains why Indiana is a white trash haven

  8. Westville has a population of about a little over 1,000 people… Most of the actual population is of prisoners in the Westville Correctional Facility. Westville’s one school has about enough room for 500 students k-12th grade. Most move, most come and go, and in reality half dont even live in Westville. Half of the students in the school come from LaPorte, Michigan City, Kingsford Heights, and etc. Plenty of kids have the capability to do better than the effort they put out. They honestly just don’t care. That’s why the scores are low. I’ve watched a boy get all F’s until someone actually got in his head. Then, when he actually tried, he was getting A’s and B’s. Great community and most people who have gone there say it’s better than other schools they’ve been to. I’m pretty sure this won’t be seen or what not, but I voiced my opinion.

  9. The reason that westville is the dumbest city is because half of the town are inmates. The prison has a capacity of approximately 3000. The rest of westville has about 2000 residents. Please do your research before posting stuff like this. Its an insult to our town

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