For decades, most people's idea of the American small town likely resembled something out of Little House on the Prairie: crumbling farmhouses and one-room schools. By November's election, with all the talk of Main Street, it was easy to forgive anyone for associating the American small town with rural locales, modest incomes and Joe Six-Packs.

Whether or not that's true, the best-educated small towns contain just the opposite. Almost all are suburbs near major universities or research centers, and the jobs--from IT in Silicon Valley to government work in McLean, Va.--are anything but blue collar.

 Take the most-educated small town on our list, Bethesda, Md. The city hosts the National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as the corporate headquarters of Marriott (nyse: MAR - news - people ), Lockheed Martin (nyse: LMT - news - people ) and COMSAT. Bethesda also boasts the highest percentage of residents with advanced degrees in the country, with 51.5% of residents over 25 who have master's degrees or Ph.D.'s.

"Of my friends who are not employed at the NIH, almost all of them have a master's degree," says Laura Thomas, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health and a Bethesda resident. "It's almost like the entire town is the campus of a top-tier research institution."

Wellesley, Mass., which ranks second, sets the paradigm for many of the other towns in the top 10. It's home to one of the top colleges in the U.S., Wellesley College, and is close to a major metropolitan area known for its culture and high property values. The remaining top five--Palo Alto, Calif., McLean, Va., and Los Altos, Calif.--post similar profiles. All three are close to a larger city and are within commuting distance of a university or major research institution.

Towns ranking 11th to 20th were also close to universities, which tended to be larger, like State College, Pa., at No. 15, which is near Pennsylvania State University, and Blacksburg, Va., at No. 14, which is near Virginia Tech. Plush suburbs, like Cupertino, Calif., and Brookline, Mass., also figured prominently in the second half of the list.