The latest Lumosity ranking of the smartest universities is based on more than 70,000 student results on a battery of tests designed to measure cognitive ability in the following areas: attention, flexibility, memory, problem solving, and speed.  Students from more than 450 institutions participated.

Attention and memory scores correlate to a lesser extent than the other areas to SAT performance, but the other area scores correlate more closely with the crystallized math and verbal knowledge measured by the SAT.  Universities had to have at least 50 student participants to qualify for consideration; therefore, small schools such as Caltech were not included.  All of the top 14 schools were highly selective private institutions.  The rankings vary considerably from the previous year’s rankings.

The top ten schools were Washington U; MIT; Princeton; Northwestern; Carnegie Mellon; Chicago; Rice; Harvard; Yale; and Dartmouth. The rankings include liberal arts colleges (Oberlin, Wheaton, Colgate, etc.)

Below are the 25 public universities whose students had the best overall performance on the cognitive tests, in rank order, with the overall ranking in parentheses.

1. Virginia (15)

2. William & Mary (19)

3. UC San Diego (23)

4. Georgia Tech (23)

5. UC Berkeley (31)

6. Colorado School of Mines (36)

7. North Carolina Chapel Hill (38)

8. College of New Jersey (41)

9. Michigan (44)

10. UT Austin (47)

11. Pitt (51)

12. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (57)

12. UC Irvine (61)

12. UCLA (61)

12. Wisconsin (61)

12. Kansas (61)

17. Connecticut (65)

17. Binghamton (65)

19. Illinois (67)

20. SUNY Geneseo (68)

20. UC Santa Barbara (68)

20. Washington (68)

23. Minnesota (71)

24. Virginia Tech (73)

24. UC Davis (77)