Leading Women’s Colleges Far Down the List on Lumosity’s Rankings of Colleges With the “Smartest Students”

Lumosity is an online program designed to increase human brain power and cognitive functioning. The Lumosity program claims to improve key abilities such as working memory, visual attention, and executive function in people of different ages and from different backgrounds.

For the second year in a row, Lumosity has published a list of the colleges and universities with the “smartest students.” Its assessment is based on the performance of students on game play data from its database of human cognitive performance. Rankings were based on scores from over 60,000 college students who played Lumosity games that challenge five cognitive areas: memory, processing speed, flexibility, attention and problem solving. Only colleges and universities that had at least 50 students who had completed game play in all five areas were included in the rankings. In total, 456 colleges and universities were ranked.

In this year’s survey, students at Washington University in St. Louis were ranked as the smartest. In last year’s survey, Washington University ranked 6th. In second place this year, and last year’s leader was MIT. Rounding out the top 10 were Princeton University, Northwestern University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Chicago, Rice University, Harvard University, Yale University, and Dartmouth College.

Three women’s colleges were included in the Lumosity rankings. Wellesley College ranked in 106th place. Smith College held the 122nd position and Mount Holyoke ranked 326th out of the 456 colleges and universities included in the rankings.

The full study and rankings can be found here.