SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lumosity, the leading brain training and neuroscience research company, today revealed its second annual ranking of the “Smartest Colleges in America” based on an analysis of its database of human cognitive performance – the largest of its kind in the world. The study examined game play data from 72,388 college students who played Lumosity games that challenge five cognitive areas: memory, processing speed, flexibility, attention and problem solving, and named Washington University in St. Louis as the best performing school out of 456 colleges. Last year’s top school was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which this year came in at number two.
This analysis draws from Lumosity’s continuously growing database with over 1.2 billion data points from 50 million users – up from 30 million users in 2012. As a result of this growth, this year’s analysis was able to improve the study methodology with stricter inclusion criteria.
“We have billions of data points on cognitive performance, and this analysis is just one example of how we can use our database to uncover cognitive performance trends within a particular demographic and at a certain point in time,” said Daniel Sternberg, Ph.D., Data Scientist at Lumosity. "College rankings typically rely on standardized test scores and GPA - what’s unique about our college rankings is that we are able to measure a sample of a student population’s core cognitive abilities, which are important underlying factors that allow you to function in your everyday life.”
Below are the rankings of the top 50 smartest colleges.
1. Washington University in St. Louis
2. Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
3. Princeton University
4. Northwestern University
5.
Carnegie Mellon University
6. University of Chicago
7. Rice
University
8. Harvard University
9. Yale University
10.
Dartmouth College
11. Tufts University
12. Stanford University
13.
Georgetown University
13. University of Notre Dame
15.
University of Virginia
16. Duke University
17. Bucknell
University
17. Vanderbilt University
19. College of William
and Mary
19. Boston College
21. Bowdoin College
22. Johns
Hopkins University
23. Cornell University
23. University of
California-San Diego
23. Georgia Institute of Technology
26.
Columbia University
27. Worcester Polytechnic Institute
28.
Boston University
29. Wheaton College
30. Case Western Reserve
University
31. Trinity College
31. University of
California-Berkeley
31. University of Southern California
34.
University of Pennsylvania
34. Brown University
36. Washington
and Lee University
36. Colorado School of Mines
38. Lafayette
College
38. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
40.
University of the Pacific
41. The College of New Jersey
41.
Colgate University
43. University of Richmond
44. Brandeis
University
44. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
46. Bethel
University
47. Villanova University
47. The University of
Texas at Austin
49. Oberlin College
49. Lehigh University
As with the 2012 analysis, the study controlled for the effects of gender, age, and their interactions; included only users between the ages of 17 and 24 who had played at least one game in each cognitive area; and included only institutions with at least 50 users who had complete score and demographic data.
To improve the reliability of the findings and increase the probability that the game scores were generated by current students at the university, the 2013 analysis was restricted to users who listed their education level as having completed “high school” (possibly freshmen), “some college” (current students), or “bachelor’s degree” (students who are about to or just recently graduated). Moreover, the analysis only included users whose first five game plays occurred between July 2012 to October 2013.
Similar to last year, this year’s analysis found that an institution’s median SAT and ACT scores were highly correlated with the Lumosity Smartest Colleges metric (r=.85). SAT scores were most strongly correlated with users’ scores in the areas of Problem Solving and Flexibility, where the most popular games rely on crystallized intelligence, which draws on accumulated knowledge and skills from life experience, such as arithmetic and vocabulary.
The rankings were also strongly correlated (Spearman’s ρ= .83) to U.S. News & World Report's annual college rankings, indicating that Lumosity's measures of individual students’ cognitive performance is consistent with the university-based measures used by other sources.
In addition, the study breaks down the college rankings by cognitive area. Tufts performed the highest on attention games, Massachusetts Institute of Technology students had the best memory and problem solving skills scores, Dartmouth University students performed the best on tasks that challenge speed of processing, and Yale students performed the highest on tasks that challenge flexibility.
This data analysis is part of Lumosity's Human Cognition Project, a research initiative designed to advance the understanding of the human brain. The complete 2013 whitepaper, including a full list of 456 colleges and the top 25 schools by cognitive area is available here: http://blog.lumosity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/SmartestColleges2013_white-paper.pdf.
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. Founded in 2005 and launched in 2007, Lumosity now has more than 40 games, 50 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, and other academic institutions. Lumosity is available at Lumosity.com, the iPhone and iPad. Lumosity is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For more information, please visit www.lumosity.com.
