You have to put the JQuery reference first, at the top of the page. Browsers load script tags synchronously, so if you try to reference JQuery's $ before loading the JQuery source, then you'll get an "undefined" error.
Actually, since script tags block the rest of the page from loading, it might be better to instead put your other script tags at the bottom, underneath the JQuery reference. This allows the browser to load and display your page markup first, before loading the scripts.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17163422/jquery-not-defined-mvc4[
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