Ivy League Intelligence

Ivy League Intelligence November 27, 2012 Which Ivy (or non-Ivy) has the students with the highest cognitive ability, you ask? We came across an article in The Harvard Crimson yesterday that describes a study conducted by Lumosity in which the company examined more than 60,000 college students on over 400 American college campuses. So what did this company examine? Well, according to The Harvard Crimson, this study analyzed results from online games that use neuroscience to measure five aspects that contribute to intelligence: speed, attention, flexibility, memory, and problem solving. So are you curious which universities had the students with the highest cognitive ability? Were a bit curious ourselves! MIT may not be in the Ivy League but MIT students edged out Harvard students in a study of cognitive abilities. Some schools compete on the football gridiron. Others compete in studies like these (photo credit: John Phelan). It turns out MIT students top the results, edging out Harvard students (score one for the non-Ivy Leaguers). Stanford, Northwestern, and Yale students follow right behind. According to The Harvard Crimson, The study also broke down each of the five cognitive areas: Harvard students topped in speed, Dartmouth in attention, Yale in flexibility, the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in memory, and MIT in problem-solving. Fascinating, huh? And apparently problem-solving scores correlated strongly with a schools median SAT scores (as reported by US News World Report). What do you think about this study? Is it ridiculous? Do you think its a landmark study in measuring human ability among our nations college students? Do you think this study should measure cognitive abilities in different ways? Do you think a university should be higher on the ranking? Let us know your thoughts by posting below about this controversial study that compares the cognitive abilities of American university students. Oh, and do you think this will add flames to the Harvard-MIT rivalry? We guess if they cant compete in football, they can at least compete in a cognitive abilities study!