Snobbiest U.S. States: How Smug Are We In Pennsylvania?

PENNSYLVANIA — If you live in Pennsylvania, have a bachelor’s degree and happen to love wine, you might want to slow down and check your sense of social superiority at the door, according to one new ranking.

Job search website Zippia recently released its ranking of the country’s snobbiest states. Using a far-from-scientific method, Zippia concluded that the snobbiest of Americans have flocked to coastal states, whereas most down-to-earth folks have stuck to the country’s middle.

Pennsylvania is in the middle of the road when it comes to being snobby, the analysis found. In fact, our state ranked 23rd on the list.

Ironically, the snob-o-meter that Zippia used to determine each state’s ranking is fairly snobby in itself:

• Have a bachelor’s degree? This puts your personal smug factor a step above everyone else.
• Have a degree in art and humanities? These “scientifically” increase a person’s snobbiness; however, the report doesn’t cite which scientific sources it considered.
• Is there an Ivy League college in your state? You’re certainly a snob by proxy. This metric also excludes — an active verb among the snooty — everyone outside of a small cluster of states in the Northeast.
• Finally, if you drink a lot of wine, you might as well kiss a life of humility goodbye. For this measure, Zippia looked at the states where residents consumed the most bottles of wine per capita. The ranking also noted that wine narrowly beat out craft beer.

Zippia didn’t, however, look at factors like wealth, income level or socioeconomic status.

So, why did Pennsylvania rank where it did?

According to Zippia, 22 percent of college-educated Pennsylvanians have a degree in the arts or humanities. We have a 10-bottle-of-wine rate per capita.

Here are the top 10 snobbiest states, according to the ranking:

1. Massachusetts
2. Vermont
3. Connecticut
4. New York
5. New Hampshire
6. Rhode Island
7. California
8. Oregon
9. Maine
10. Virginia

Here are the 10 least snobby states:

41. Indiana and South Carolina (tie)
43. Iowa
44. Wyoming
45. South Dakota
46. Alabama
47. Arkansas
48. Oklahoma
49. Mississippi
50. West Virginia

See the full ranking of snobbiest U.S. states.