MomCares

Rank University Median Grand
Index
1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 113.88
2 Harvard University 113.31
3 Stanford University 112.97
4 Northwestern University 112.61
5 Yale University 112.16
6 Washington University in St Louis 111.84
7 Dartmouth College 111.83
8 Wellesley College 111.60
9 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology 111.20
10 Duke University 110.91


The top 10 seem credible.

tk21769

The "Lumosity" test measures attention, memory, speed, problem-solving, and flexibility. That covers a lot of cognitive ground. It surely isn't a perfect measure of general intelligence, but I think the strong correlation with other measurements is significant.

Weaknesses:
* they probably did not get an equally good random sample of students at all participating schools
* they didn't test across pre-college and post-college intervals, so they aren't seeing any improvement of student performance over time that might be attributable to the colleges.

collapsingspace

it seems hard to take this ranking seriously..

SerenityJade

Just stop there. Lumosity is trying to promote their product with a very idiotic ranking of college students to further add to the rivalry between colleges and the promotion of college to the general population as something that makes a person smarter.

tk21769

Here's some information about the people behind this study:

Brain Games & Brain Training - Lumosity
Company Information, Company History, and Management Team - Lumosity
Online Brain Training - Academic Research Collaborators & Healthcare and Other Partners - Lumosity

They appear to be a bunch of neuroscience geeks trying to make some money off their knowledge (just like thousands of people in software and biotechnology start-ups.) They (or somebody familiar with their work) decided to try applying their techniques to the problem of ranking colleges.

Applying completely different concepts and methods from the ones used by US News, these folks come up with a ranking that is fairly similar. Posters are getting too hung up on a few individual differences (Columbia University too low, Pacific too high, etc.) Granted, the general similarity may be because both this ranking and the USNWR ranking reflect (directly or indirectly) colleges' ability to attract a certain kind of student, without really measuring instructional quality or outcomes.