University of the PACIFIC

For years, faculty members have spoken highly about Pacific students, claiming they were a really smart bunch. Now a software company says it can prove it.

Lumosity, a San Francisco-based online game company that makes popular online memory games that are marketed as ways to improve memory and cognition, said that its user studies show that Pacific students are among the smartest college students in the United States, smarter than those at Princeton, Vassar or Notre Dame.

"There is currently a lot of interest in these so-called brain-training games because of their potential to help older adults maintain their cognitive function. Many of these games are similar to tasks found in standard tests of cognitive ability, but it is not clear that performance on these games is an accurate measure of how smart a person is," said Professor Elizabeth Graham, a cognitive psychologist in the Department of Psychology whose research examines age-related changes to memory and attention. "It is interesting to see that college students are also playing these brain-training games, and of course it is fun to be able to brag that Pacific students are doing better than many of their peers."

Lumosity, which was launched in 2007, offers numerous games that it says will improve memory, mental flexibility, attention, speed and problem solving. According to a Lumosity blog post, the company could determine if a user was logging in from a college campus, and was able to identified more than 90,000 students from 400 colleges using its website. Based on the average scores earned by students at each university, the company compiled the top 50 best-scoring schools. Pacific came in at #27. Lumosity released a "white paper" that explained how they compiled their list at http://blog.lumosity.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Lumositys-Smartest-Colleges.pdf.

"Pacific's students embrace learning and personal development," said Provost Maria Pallavicini.  "We are pleased that our students are receiving some well-deserved national recognition through their engagement with Lumosity."

The company's smartest college campuses announcement was made last week.

The full list is below:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2. Harvard University
3. Stanford University
4. Northwestern University
5. Yale University
6. Washington University in St Louis
7. Dartmouth College
8. Wellesley College
9. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
10. Duke University
11. College of William and Mary
12. University of Pennsylvania
13. University of Portland
14 University of California-Berkeley
15. Vanderbilt University
16. University of Chicago
17. Carnegie Mellon University
18. Macalester College
19. Worcester Polytechnic Institute
20. University of California-Los Angeles
21. Emory University
22. Lafayette College
23. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
24. Case Western Reserve University
25. Boston College
26. Boston University
27. University of the Pacific
28. Vassar College
29. Hamilton College
30. Brown University
31. University of Rochester
32. Lehigh University
33. Oberlin College
34. University of Notre Dame
35. Villanova University
36. Tufts University
37. Bucknell University
38. Northeastern University
39. Princeton University
40 Bowdoin College
41. Trinity University
42. Butler University
43. St. Olaf College
44. University of Virginia-Main Campus
45. Colgate University
46. Rice University
47. Johns Hopkins University
48. University of Wisconsin-Madison
49. Ohio Northern University
50. The College of New Jersey

For more information about Lumosity, visit http://www.lumosity.com/. For more Pacific rankings, visit http://www.pacific.edu/About-Pacific/General-Questions/Pacific-Rankings.html.