When I talk to undergraduate students about their postgraduate plans, they typically tell me about something that involves moving to a large city. They are often sure of the city even before they know what they want to do there. When I ask why they are moving to San Francisco — or Denver, or Nashville or New York — the answer inevitably reveals a common assumption: Big cities are where highly educated people must go to succeed economically and socially.

The conventional wisdom among young college-educated people seems to be that living in a small country town would be a dead end for them — that rural America is a homogeneously conservative, isolated and unpleasant place. But these preconceptions are not only incorrect, they are also unduly limiting the opportunities of new college graduates.

I recently analyzed the data from a nationwide survey on community and society conducted by the American Enterprise Institute. The data show that rural areas are not ideologically monolithic; that college-educated Americans living in rural areas feel they are meaningfully connected to their communities; that these people are quite satisfied with their communities and the available professional opportunities, and are not looking to move away.

Let’s start with the idea that urban areas are overwhelmingly progressive and rural areas overwhelmingly conservative. This is simply wrong. It is true that ideological differences by urbanization level exist, but they are smaller than you might think. In large cities, 39 percent of the population identifies as liberal in some form, 23 percent as conservative and 38 percent as moderate. The inverse is true for rural areas, where 20 percent of residents are liberal, compared with 42 percent conservative and 37 percent moderate.