SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 01, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Lumosity, the online brain training and neuroscience research company, today revealed the smartest colleges in America based on an analysis of its database of human cognitive performance. The study examined game play data from over 60,000 college students across five cognitive areas: memory, processing speed, flexibility, attention and problem solving, and named Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the smartest school.
College rankings typically use standardized test scores to measure intelligence, but tests like the SAT and ACT are designed solely to predict scholastic ability and performance.
"This new metric is really interesting because for the first time, we are able to directly measure cognitive performance by looking at the underlying core cognitive abilities of a student population," said Daniel Sternberg, Ph.D., Data Scientist at Lumosity. "Deciding where to go to college can be a difficult decision, and this analysis provides college applicants another data point to determine what the right college fit might be for them."
Below are the rankings of the top 50 smartest colleges.
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2. Harvard University
3. Stanford University
4. Northwestern University
5. Yale University
6. Washington University in St Louis
7. Dartmouth College
8. Wellesley College
9. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
10. Duke University
11. College of William and Mary
12. University of Pennsylvania
13. University of Portland
14. University of California-Berkeley
15. Vanderbilt University
16. University of Chicago
17. Carnegie Mellon University
18. Macalester College
19. Worcester Polytechnic Institute
20. University of California-Los Angeles
21. Emory University
22. Lafayette College
23. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
24. Case Western Reserve University
25. Boston College
26. Boston University
27. University of the Pacific
28. Vassar College
29. Hamilton College
30. Brown University
31. University of Rochester
32. Lehigh University
33. Oberlin College
34. University of Notre Dame
35. Villanova University
36. Tufts University
37. Bucknell University
38. Northeastern University
39. Princeton University
40. Bowdoin College
41. Trinity University
42. Butler University
43. St. Olaf College
44. University of Virginia-Main Campus
45. Colgate University
46. Rice University
47. Johns Hopkins University
48. University of Wisconsin-Madison
49. Ohio Northern University
50. The College of New Jersey
The study controlled for the effects of gender, age, and their interactions, included only users who had played at least one game in each cognitive area, and who had provided their date of birth and gender. In order to improve the reliability of the findings while still providing good coverage across a large number of schools, the list includes only institutions with at least 50 users who had complete score and demographic data. The list does not include users associated with ongoing university-based studies of Lumosity.
A university's score on the Lumosity's Smartest Colleges metric was strongly correlated with that school's median composite SAT and ACT scores (r = .85 and .84, respectively), suggesting that Lumosity game performance can be related to real-world outcomes. The rankings were also strongly correlated (r = .79) to U.S. News & World Report's annual college rankings, indicating that Lumosity's measures of individual students cognitive performance overlaps with the university-based measures used by other sources.
The study also breaks down the college rankings by cognitive area. Dartmouth College performed the highest on attention, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology students had the best memory, Harvard University students performed the highest on speed of processing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology students were the best problem solvers, and Yale students performed the highest on flexibility.
This data analysis is part of Lumosity's Human Cognition Project, a research initiative designed to advance our understanding of the human mind. The complete whitepaper including a full list of over 400 colleges and the top 50 schools by cognitive area is available here: http://blog.lumosity.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/… .
About Lumosity
Lumosity is committed to pioneering the understanding and enhancement of the human brain to give each person the power to unlock their full potential. Lumosity's online and mobile programs train core cognitive abilities such as memory and attention. Launched in 2007, Lumosity now has more than 40 games, 25 million members, and paying subscribers from 180 countries. Lumosity's games are based on the latest discoveries in neuroscience, with continuing independent third-party studies being conducted by researchers at Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and other academic institutions. Lumosity is available at Lumosity.com and on the iPhone. Lumosity is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For more information, please visit www.lumosity.com .
SOURCE: Lumosity
Curious what went wrong with Michigan, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Princeton.
Egregious michigan trolling since undergrad there is pretty easy to get into.
I'm actually not that surprised by the study, except maybe dartmouth and wustl being so high and also university of portland. Wtf?
Brown and Princeton are heavy on rich legacy admits, which dilute the intellectual pool of the student body. Columbia is not as strong on STEM as compared to harvard/mit/stanford. Cornell has strong engineering, physics, business, but i'm guessing the state college programs at cornell brought their score down.
Actually, out-of-state, Michigan is pretty competitive. It's also one of only 3 schools in the nation with a top 10-ranked business, engineering, and medical school, the other one being Stanford...forgot what the third was lol.
Right... Boston University 26th and Princeton 39?... And I bet Compton Community College is 51.
No offense to BU, just saying..
Where is Cal Tech??
Dat dere cal tech?
Where's Deep Springs?
i feel like an idiot for never having heard of "Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology", which is apparently an intellectual powerhouse.
It's a small engineering school in Terre-Haute, Indiana.
I'm just glad that intelligence isn't everything, because that wouldn't be great for me.
You, me, both.
South Harmon is conspicuously absent
Lol what, at my HYP heard nothing about such a study going on. While I am not offended by the results I'd be really skeptical, the sample pool for each school is probably not huge.
And what about UOP? I guess they haven't warmed up to online universities yet.
Lafayette above Lehigh? How is that even possible? This study clearly has no merit.
Just a hunch, but this might be somewhat correlated with the strength/difficulty of neuroscience programs at each university as students in these programs are likely the guinea pigs
Agreed. I reject this study as false.
no devry?
No Caltech? That school is going to be at least on par with MIT. Amherst and Williams aren't around either. How the hell are Columbia/Cornell so low compared to a lot of these schools, along with Princeton and Brown to a lesser extent.
I think it got some of the top schools right, but it's missing quite a bit.
This is a horrible article
Not surprised at Northwestern and Wash U being so high as these two are often overlooked because of their location, despite having some of the smartest kids in the country.
Omission of caltech, however, is strange, as well as the inclusion of a few bizzare LACs which you would not expect to score very high, if you had heard of them at all. sampling errors?
Bowdoin, Wellesley, Vassar and Macalaster are there...but not Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Middlebury or the Claremont Colleges. Reed isn't on there either - it might be low ranked, but those students are undoubtedly smart.
And no Caltech...I think the omissions make a strong case that the study is flawed.
The small sizes of these schools probably makes sampling an issue. But still, the complete lack of caltech is a big sign of error; it's right there with MIT as being the no. 1/2 school. You can find average to dumb kids at any of the ivies, but I think you'd be very very hard pressed to find a kid at MIT or Cal that isn't at least above average.
Where's Texas? :D
According to them, these are the top smartest cities:
1.Charlottesville, Va. – 58.53% 2.Lafayette, In. – 58.41% 3.Anchorage, Alaska – 57.83% 4.Madison, Wis. – 56.84% 5.San Francisco – Oakland – San Jose, Calif. – 55.47% 6.Cedar Rapids – Waterloo – Iowa City – Dubuque, Iowa – 55.37% 7.Honolulu, Hawaii – 55.29% 8.Johnstown – Altoona, Pa. – 55.18% 9.Champaign – Springfield-Decatur, Ill. – 54.75% 10.Minneapolis – St. Paul, Minn. – 54.64% 11.Boston, MA – Manchester, N.H. – 54.49% 12.Austin, Texas – 54.18% 13.Rochester, N.Y. – 53.99% 14.Gainesville, Fla. – 53.97% 15.Fargo – Valley City, N.D. – 53.92% 16.Lansing, Mich. – 53.75% 17.Santa Barbara – Santa Maria – San Luis Obispo, Calif. – 53.73% 18.Burlington, Vt. – Plattsburgh, N.Y. – 53.72% 19.Pittsburgh, Pa. – 53.71% 20.Syracuse, N.Y. – 53.68% 21.Baton Rouge, La. – 53.58% 22.Columbia – Jefferson City, Mo. – 53.57% 23.La Crosse – Eau Claire, Wis. – 53.57% 24.Harrisburg – Lancaster – Lebanon – York, Pa. – 53.56% 25.Springfield – Holyoke, Mass. – 53.51%
So if you want to find the smartest people, first look in VA.
Guess that explains the credit crisis. It all makes sense now. NYC FTW
Love #8 which is a lower tier feeder to penn state and one of the most hill billy town in PA
something seems fishy... I could see why UMich wouldn't make it though, with 40,000 students, there's bound to be some dumbasses (I've had them in my groups -__-) bringing our score down. I'm sure I wouldn't have helped out much either though, so I guess I shouldn't talk.
where the hell is CalTech? that alone makes me ignore this.
edit: ^^^smartest cities... Lansing? fuck that. this is just a joke now
I can confirm that this is true.
I honestly can't think of a more useless ranking. Unless you're from UPortland and this gives you some validation.
This looks almost like a completely random list. The only thing potentially more hilarious than people taking this "ranking" seriously was the multiple attempts at Michigan trolling.
Is the third one Penn? The med school and business school are definitely top 3. Though I'm not sure about engineering.
What's really amazing is what school has a TOP 3 business, engineering, medical AND law program? A history of how Stanford became such an epic institution would be interesting, considering that it is such a (relatively) young school.
Stanford is awesome, but its med school is top 10, not top 3.
Overall, Stanford is probably the most well rounded school academically in the entire world. Top 5 in every single academic department and professional program. Not even Harvard can match that since its engineering is weak.
To be honest, I've never heard of Penn's medical school lol, so I'm betting probably not. Furthermore, as a poster above mentioned, both Michigan law and architecture are also both top 10. So there....that answers your question regarding top 10 engineering, medicine, business, AND law programs. Here are law school rankings:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/rankings.html
Very true. I've got friends across all the departments....I think architecture kids might actually get worked harder than engineering lol.
Honolulu is the 7th smartest? The very city that employs Dog the Bounty Hunter?
Brown and Princeton are heavy on rich legacy admits, which dilute the intellectual pool of the student body.
I don't know about this, I would have thought that both would have been at least in the top 15? Boston College, BU and Vanderbilt above the two above (if any school is heavy on rich legacy admits it would be Vanberbilt).
I always thought that Brown had really smart students (and usually smarter than Dartmouth, Penn, Cornell, Columbia), smarter than the rankings suggest.
Brown and Princeton are heavy on rich legacy admits, which dilute the intellectual pool of the student body.
I don't know about this, I would have thought that both would have been at least in the top 15? Boston College, BU and Vanderbilt above the two above (if any school is heavy on rich legacy admits it would be Vanberbilt).
I always thought that Brown had really smart students (and usually smarter than Dartmouth, Penn, Cornell, Columbia), smarter than the rankings suggest.
Just from my experience, I've been less than impressed with the caliber of students from brown and princeton. I think harvard/stanford/mit have the highest quality of undergrads in the country.
The omission of some schools like CalTech & Harvey-Mudd implies that they didn't look at those schools. Those two schools have the highest average SAT scores in the nation (yes, higher than Ivies+MIT/Stanford) due to no affirmative action policies.
As much as I hate to, I'd have to give the "Best US public school" award to UC Berkeley.
Trinity. Hahahahhahahahahahahahhahaa.
Probably explains why some of the schools people have mentioned are missing. I think it'd be really interesting to have the games be public so people can play them and see where they would fall on the list.
Talk about a marketing gimmick. LOL. Let's pretend we're a legitimate company and put out a "ranking", then all the dumb-asses will be impressed enough to think that they need to pay us money so they can become "smarter" hahahahahahahaha
1) Why the hell are Rice, Hopkins, Brown, and Princeton so low
2) Where is Caltech / Amherest / Williams / etc.
3) This is not controlling for many factors such as effort etc. Kids from MIT just might be trying really hard on these tests for some reason.
4) Northeastern > Princeton / Hopkins pretty much invalidates this list.
5) Look at the average SAT scores of Lafayette college vs. Brown / Princeton and tell me if this makes any sense.
I'm gonna refrain from tearing all pro-Michigan comments apart and just say that anyone who thinks a smart person lives in Lansing is some fucked up shit
I was just kidding about Lansing, I've only been there once for ~3 hours so I have no idea what the people there are like.
Damn art school kids bringing my school's ranking down
Wtf where's Devry? Some true scholars...
Look up med school rankings. Penn is literately #3 after Johns Hopkins and Harvard. Penn's professional schools- Business, Medicine, and Law are all much higher than the corresponding of Michigan.
relax
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