VALDOSTA — A study conducted by apartmentlist.com named Valdosta the sixth best city in the state of Georgia for families.

In addition, Valdosta ranked the highest among any city outside of the Atlanta area, and higher than Atlanta.

The study scored Georgia cities on four factors — safety, housing cost, school quality, and child friendliness.

In those factors, Valdosta scored 20 points out of a possible 35 in safety, which was calculated by the number of violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents.

Valdosta ranked higher in safety than the cities of Marietta, Albany, Columbus, Atlanta, and Macon.

In affordability, which is calculated from the percentage of average income required to rent a two-bedroom apartment, Valdosta scored 26 points out of a possible 30, scoring as many points as Marietta, Athens and Albany, and more than Atlanta and Macon.

In school quality, which is based off of high school graduation rates, Valdosta scored 10 points out of a possible 25, outranking Columbus, Athens (which only scored 4 points), Albany, and Macon (which only scored 2 points).

In kid friendliness, which is based off the percentage of the population under 18, Valdosta scored 5 out of a possible 10 points, scoring as highly as Smyrna and Marietta, and higher than Sandy Springs, Athens and Atlanta.

The only cities that scored higher than Valdosta overall were Roswell, Alpharetta, Smyrna, Sandy Springs and Marietta.