Lumosity's 2013 Smartest Colleges Rankings Announced

College Search & Selection
1

<p>"This year Washington University in St. Louis was named #1, ousting MIT from last year’s top spot. The analysis was based on:
· 72,388 college students who use Lumosity’s brain training program
· Ranked schools on five core cognitive abilities: memory, processing speed, flexibility, attention and problem solving ...</p>

<p>... the white paper detailing the methodology is available here: <a href="http://blog.lumosity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/SmartestColleges2013_white-paper.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://blog.lumosity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/SmartestColleges2013_white-paper.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Top 10:</p>

<ol>
<li>Washington University in St Louis</li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology</li>
<li>Princeton University</li>
<li>Northwestern University</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon University</li>
<li>University of Chicago</li>
<li>Rice University</li>
<li>Harvard University</li>
<li>Yale University</li>
<li>Dartmouth College</li>
</ol>

2

<p>"This year Washington University in St. Louis was named #1, "</p>

<p>Come again?</p>

3

<p>Tufts finishes at #11</p>

<p>Number one in attention.</p>

<p>Go Jumbos!</p>

4

<p>White paper is what is wrapping this piece of marketing hype.</p>

<p>I get the feeling that Lumosity is the new eHarmony.</p>

5

<p>We here at Wash U are very s-m-r-t.</p>

6

<p>Disappointing that CC would assist Luminosity in this silly publicity stunt</p>

7

<p>Interesting. Effect on [prestigiosity</a> ranking](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/978040-ranking-colleges-prestigiosity.html]prestigiosity”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/978040-ranking-colleges-prestigiosity.html) as yet unclear…</p>

8

<p>

</p>

<p>Note the absence of schools like Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore. Perhaps students at such schools have better things to do with their time than play silly on-line games!</p>

9

<p>

</p>

<p>Maybe the schools that didn’t fare as well have students who are more interested in other things than online games.</p>

<p>ETA: cross-posted with Sue. :)</p>

10

<p>How silly - this is clearly just a Lumosity PR ploy. As if their commercials weren’t irritating enough.</p>

<p>The methodology section states that users between the ages of 17 and 24 were mapped to universities by IP addresses and/or email address domain … seems full of holes to me, even if performance on Lumosity games meant something. “Smartest Colleges”? Nice try, guys.</p>

<p>It’s interesting to me that some schools hold the same rank in both the USNews rankings and this one: Dartmouth at #10, Vandy at #17. Which reinforces my skepticism about USNews.</p>

11

<p>Glad I’m not the only one who dislikes the Lumosity commercials. The woman with the short hair gets on my nerves.</p>

12

<p>I am a big fan of Lumosity but the whole college ranking thing borders on the ridiculous. IMO one’s skill at Lumosity has little to do with one’s intelligence. Performance is increased proportionately to the amount of time you spend training. So really, the higher ranked colleges in this ranking system are simply those who have students who are devoting more time to the games. Not sure you want to hold the first place position in this ranking system.</p>

<p>Actually, I find the PR engine at WUSTL more annoying than any of the Lumosity commercials.</p>

13

<p>As a neuroscience student, Lumosity annoys me. “Based on neuroscience,” they say, or something like that. They had one small, internal study that showed a very marginal improvement in a few areas of memory and attention, with no study of the long term effects. This is BS science. You need a large study with adequate measures, controls, and sample size, externally conducted, and peer review. They have not provided any evidence that satisfies me that Lumosity is anything more than a useless gimmick.
And this “smartest colleges” thing is just another terrible measure. I don’t even want to get started on all the holes in this for being a legitimate, even vaguely scientific measure.</p>