<p>This ranking system is supposed to identify the universities in America with the smartest students.</p>
<p>The</a> 20 Smartest Colleges In America - Yahoo! Finance</p>
<p>You can link to the study and see how these rating compare to USNWR ratings and a further break down by types of intelligence. According to the study Darmouth students did best in attention, RHIT in memory, Harvard in processing speed, MIT in problem solving and Yale in Flexibility.</p>
<p>It strikes me as a fairly crude tool, with a lot of questions (for example, do the students at University of Portland who choose to play this game represent the student body in general?). But the rough correlation to SAT scores is interesting. Also, when you look at the big list, there are some surprises in the upper reaches, but not many at all in the lower reaches.</p>
<p>Where’s Caltech?</p>
<p>This looks like a very silly ranking to me, but just to stir the pot . . . it’s interesting to see some heavy hitters that didn’t make the “top 20,” including:</p>
<h1>21 Emory</h1>
<h1>31 Brown</h1>
<h1>35 Notre Dame</h1>
<h1>39 Princeton</h1>
<h1>47 Rice</h1>
<h1>48 Johns Hopkins</h1>
<h1>52 Cornell</h1>
<h1>61 Columbia</h1>
<h1>121 Georgetown</h1>
<p>bovertine, it’s not mentioned at all. From the full study (link is within the article):</p>
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<p>I’m guessing that Caltech was just too small to generate a large enough sample size. I suppose if Caltech really cared, the students could easily hack the results–probably any college population could–because there are limitations to the study. For instance, </p>
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<p>Now I’ve got a hankering to go play Word Bubbles… :)</p>
<p>Finally, undeniable proof of what I’ve suspected all along: Northeastern is better than Princeton.</p>
<p>Interesting…MIT and CMU and R-H and WPI… but no CalTech or Harvey Mudd or Olin.</p>
<p>Re: Caltech. I’ll offer the hypothesis that Caltech students don’t play the Luminosity games at all, making them in fact the smartest. I’m a little surprised that MIT students have time to play.</p>
<p>(Of course, I am hanging out on CC, so have no justification to throw stones from my glass house.)</p>
<p>CalTech, Mudd, etc. are probably just too small.</p>
<p>They tested 400 of the 3000+ colleges out there. Does that actually mean anything?</p>
<p>Are there really 3000 colleges?</p>
<p>Only 7 points separate the first 37 schools on the list. In some schools, the sample could include the brighter kids interested in taking on a challenge; in others, the sample could mainly include the slackers, because the better students are too busy taking harder classes, extra classes, or pursuing multiple ECs. Without some standardized sample group, the results are as useless as Internet polls – depending on the website, one might list Steve Jobs as “most influential” and another Justin Bieber.</p>
<p>Brown scored low because the only ones playing the game were stoned at the time. ;)</p>
<p>11 is probably pretty accurate =P</p>
<p>"
Are there really 3000 colleges?"</p>
<p>No, college alum. There are the top 20 unis, the top 20 LACs, then every state has a flagship so that’s 50, so a total of 90. That’s the grand total. </p>
<p>(Why would 3000 colleges in a country the size of ours be surprising?)</p>
<p>"(Why would 3000 colleges in a country the size of ours be surprising?)"</p>
<p>Because it’s probably more than the rest of the world combined has?</p>
<p>(I’m not doubting the 3000+ figure, I’m saying it is pretty amazing that there are so many colleges in the USA.)</p>
<p>^ That’s interesting. Then this international set of rankings for 12K universities would be wrong. [WORLD</a> | Ranking Web of Universities](<a href=“http://www.webometrics.info/en/world?page=120]WORLD”>http://www.webometrics.info/en/world?page=120)</p>
<p>It’s actually 2700 four year schools and 1700 two year schools in the US. </p>
<p>[Fast</a> Facts](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84]Fast”>Fast Facts: Educational institutions (84))</p>
<p>All ranking means nothing, the only important factor is if UG is a good fit for student’s personality and wide range of interest. The student body varies a lot at every school in respect to intellectual level, talent level, social skills, interests, anybody can find their peer group(s) and a really smart kid will look for variety. Otherwise it might be boring experience that will not prepare them for real life situations and will not allow them to grow as a person. Many very intense kids from fancy schools, sorry for language, it is not mine, lack in very important social skills. These are even more important in Grad. School and at work. Those wiht good teamwork expriences who are aware of various personalities have advantage over others with superior intellect in all other aspects.</p>
<p>Well…at least it is a ranking by people who have no immediate financial interest in college rankings…that in and of itself makes it less suspect than those other rankings…maybe what we need is a ranking of the rankings… or how about a ranking of those making the rankings of the rankings or…oh never mind …I always struggled with recursive functions.</p>
<p>^Yes, ranking fy intself is a topic for ranking and get too much attention, which is basically waste,…that is why my D. and we did not check any ranking when she was decided about her UG. It would make no input into her decision making. I can see though that some people would love to have certain school name to be attached to theirs for the rest of their lives. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, pursue any criteria, if certain name is attractive, go ahead, why not? Does it has to do with ranking or the name, I have no idea.</p>
<p>I do find it rather suspect that MIT landed in first place. Given that the point spread is fairly tiny and that individual skill sets needed to be evaluated and compiled, one wonders if the list designers massaged their data until they came up with a list that looked more legitimate to a general audience.</p>