Case Western Reserve University was recently ranked number 24 in Lumosity’s “Smartest Colleges in America.” Lumosity is a San Francisco-based company that creates brain-training exercises.

“Case Western’s ranking just proves that this college is one the best in providing top-notch education and resources to its students,” said freshman Shriya Shah.

“We are also a very diverse and integrated campus, and most people I know here are extremely focused, and are willing to challenge themselves and allow for academic and personal growth throughout their four years.”

For this particular list, the company asked a candidate sample of 89,699 users who were students between the ages 17 and 25 from colleges all around the United States to participate in the test study.

The company made sure to conduct the study in a way that limits the analysis to the student population of the universities. Those conducting the study also made sure to remove the small number of users who were already taking part in university-based clinical studies to further level the field.

Experimenters looked at the user scores for a game in each of the five Lumosity Brain Areas, which are speed, attention, flexibility, memory, and problem solving. Lumosity only included the students who played at least one game in each area and had provided their date of birth and gender.

After the scores were normalized, the company used inverse percentile rank normalization tables for each game that it had previously collected in its database. The researchers claim to have controlled the effects of gender, linear and quadratic effects of age, and the interactions of gender and age variables by adjusting the linear regression models.

From this, they predicted the normalized score for each brain area that was tested. The sum of all these scores, from all five areas, was then renormalized to create a Grand Index score.

From this index, Lumosity ranked institutions all around the country. The list included all the colleges in which at least 50 students completed the games and provided their demographic data.

The top five universities were the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University, Northwestern University, and Yale University. As a reference, MIT had a median Grand Index of 113.8, while Harvard came in second with an index of 113.31.

With an impressive rank of 24, Case Western ranked higher than Boston College, Boston University, Brown University, University of Rochester, Princeton University, Rice University, and Johns Hopkins University.

Sophomore Avik Banerjee said, “This ranking shows that people at Case Western are dedicated and devoted to learning.”

Lumosity has raised $70 million in funding, which they use to compile the world’s largest database of human cognitive performance over the past five years. Its study and subsequent rankings are definitely a good sign for CWRU.

Freshman Bart Ziganti added, “I think it is great Case is ranked so high and its students are recognized for the intellectuals they are. We aren’t Ivy League students, yet this school continually impresses on a national stage.”