A few weeks ago at a family birthday party, a friend posed an interesting trivia question which I thought I had a fair chance at since it involved a state where I once lived: the great state of Nebraska.  Do  you know what the 3 largest cities in Nebraska are?

Answer: Omaha, Lincoln (everyone knows those two) and…  Bellevue.  I’ve heard of Bellevue, but it wasn’t my guess for third place.  I  was thinking of the western city of Scottsbluff, which is actually on the western side of Nebraska near Cheyenne Wyoming.  I guessed Scottsbluff since it has a zoo that I always wanted to visit when we resided there, but we never made it there since Scottsbluff was almost as far away from our home in Lincoln as was our family 2 states over in Illinois!  But anyway, my point is that Scottsbluff didn’t even make the top 10 of Nebraska’s largest cities.  The city of Kearney (pronounced Carnie) crossed my mind since it was always advertised as a nearby tourist attraction when we lived in Lincoln, but it was #5 on the list.  And by the way, #5-10 of the largest cities in Nebraska only have between 20-30,000 people!!

I found this info while I was looking up the answer to my friend’s trivia question, and I found it interesting, so I decided to pass it on.  Then again, it was probably only interesting to me because I used to call Lincoln Nebraska home.  Well anyway, if you come across the ‘3 largest cities in Nebraska’ trivia question, you can now impress your friends by correctly saying Omaha, Lincoln, and Bellevue!

The answer we all want for this question is of course a resounding yes (I hope :P).  However, if you live in an urban environment the statistics show that his or her chances are lower than if they live in the surrounding suburbs, at least for most of the 50 largest cities.  Chicago, for example, has a 55.7% graduation rate while the Chicago suburbs are at 84.1%.  Two Ohio cities have more drastic statistics with Cleveland at 42.2% vs. 78.1% and Columbus being 40.9% vs. 82.9%, and Baltimore, Md. has the largest gap at 34.6% vs. 81.5% for its suburbs!  However, at the other end of the scale your child is about 10% more likely to graduate in the city of Colorado Springs (83.7%) than its surrounding suburbs (73.5%).  Click the link for rest of the 50 largest cities.

‘Crisis’ graduation gap found between cities, suburbs