Think Harvard or Yale ranks number one? Think again.

Daniel Sternberg and his fellow data scientists at brain-training company Lumosity recently unveiled their first list of America’s Smartest Colleges. Instead of using traditional college ranking methodologies, which depend heavily on standardized test scores and non-cognitive metrics (such as student-faculty ratios and capital endowment rates), the Lumos Lab team based results on rankings from over 70,000 college students at 456 universities who played Lumosity cognitive-training games. These games challenged five cognitive areas: memory, processing speed, flexibility, attention, and problem solving.

So, who took the top spot?

Washington University ranked number one with Massachusetts Institute of Technology following closely behind. Harvard and Yale, the anticipated winners, ranked nine and ten on the list.



Here is a complete list of the Top 50:

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 (IL)

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