SAN FRANCISCO--(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/2012/11/Lumositys-Smartest-Colleges.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. 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.