50 Snobbiest Places in Illinois for 2026 Revealed

I'm not a fan of class warfare, but if we're being honest with ourselves, there are some places that are snobbier than others. According to new science, there are 50 places in Illinois that feel like they are superior to the rest.

I have very little patience for those who feel like they are better than others, but I also am happy for those who have success and can afford to live in nice places. I have some very successful friends who couldn't be nicer if they tried, so this list isn't about rich people being mean because that's simply not true. However, it would be accurate to say that this new snobbiest places in Illinois list does include some very ritzy neighborhoods.

How did I determine if a neighborhood in Illinois is snobby?

I asked ChatGPT a very detailed question about specific metrics. Here are the categories I queried the machine about:

• Average/median household income (45%)
• Education level (proxy: elite suburbs, university towns) (15%)
• Home values (luxury housing markets) (30%)
• Online reputation / “snob” perception (based on community sentiment & reviews, including Reddit where relevant) (10%)

The robots excitedly elaborated on my question and provided the following tiers:

• Tier 1 – Ultra-elite North Shore & gated wealth (1–10)
• Tier 2 – Old money suburbs & executive enclaves (11–20)
• Tier 3 – High-income professional suburbs (21–30)
• Tier 4 – Educated + upscale hybrid cities (31–40)
• Tier 5 – “Aspirational snob” / rising affluent areas (41–50)

Based on all of that science, here are the 50 snobbiest places in Illinois for 2026:

I was very surprised to see Bloomington and Champaign in this list. It seems that the robots feel like the highly-educated are more likely to shun the rest of us.