StrategyHarvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences/Facebook Engineering students at Harvard University, which ranks as the third smartest private college in the US.
We recently ranked the smartest colleges in America, and private institutions dominated the top of the list. The California Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago rank as Nos. 1 and 2, followed by the Ivies Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
In order to determine a school's overall smarts, Jonathan Wai, a Duke University Talent Identification Program research scientist, analyzed the average standardized test scores that schools report to US News. (Those that did not report scores are not included.)
These tests are often criticized, but research shows that both the SAT and ACT are good measures of general cognitive ability, since just about any mental test measures one's ability to reason.
ACT scores were converted to SAT scores (math + verbal) using this concordance table so all schools could be compared on one metric. Then, an average of the 25th and 75th percentile was computed (see more detail on methods and limitations here).
On the following ranking, a (2) next to the school's name indicates that some or all students aren't required to supply scores; a (3) indicates that the school did not supply all students it has scores for, or did not tell US News if it had; a (4) indicates that the data is from a previous year, rather than from the most recent year; and a (9) indicates that the school may not require scores from all applicants and that it may not have submitted data for all students.
Here are the smartest private colleges in America:
Smarts Rank | School | Average SAT |
1 | California Institute of Technology | 1550 |
2 | University of Chicago | 1510 |
3 | Harvard University | 1505 |
3 | Yale University | 1505 |
5 | Princeton University | 1500 |
6 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 1495 |
7 | Harvey Mudd College | 1494 |
8 | Columbia University | 1480 |
9 | Stanford University | 1475 |
9 | Northwestern University | 1475 |
11 | Rice University | 1470 |
12 | Vanderbilt University | 1465 |
12 | Washington University in St. Louis | 1465 |
12 | University of Notre Dame | 1465 |
15 | Duke University | 1460 |
15 | Pomona College | 1460 |
17 | University of Pennsylvania | 1455 |
17 | Dartmouth College | 1455 |
17 | Williams College | 1455 |
20 | Amherst College | 1450 |
20 | Swarthmore College | 1450 |
22 | Johns Hopkins University | 1445 |
22 | Bowdoin College (2) | 1445 |
24 | Brown University | 1440 |
24 | Carnegie Mellon University | 1440 |
24 | Tufts University | 1440 |
27 | Claremont McKenna College | 1435 |
28 | Cornell University | 1420 |
28 | Georgetown University | 1420 |
28 | Northeastern University | 1420 |
31 | Carleton College | 1415 |
32 | Haverford College | 1410 |
33 | Vassar College | 1405 |
34 | Grinnell College | 1400 |
35 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | 1395 |
36 | Hamilton College | 1390 |
36 | Washington and Lee University | 1390 |
38 | Wellesley College | 1385 |
38 | Wesleyan University (2) | 1385 |
40 | University of Southern California | 1380 |
41 | Colgate University (3) | 1375 |
41 | Reed College (4) | 1375 |
41 | Cooper Union | 1375 |
44 | Emory University | 1370 |
44 | Case Western Reserve University | 1370 |
46 | Macalester College | 1368 |
47 | Boston College | 1365 |
47 | Brandeis University | 1365 |
47 | Middlebury College | 1365 |
50 | Tulane University | 1360 |
50 | Scripps College (3) | 1360 |
52 | Smith College (2) | 1355 |
52 | Oberlin College | 1355 |
52 | Bates College (2) | 1355 |
55 | New York University | 1345 |
55 | University of Rochester (2) | 1345 |
55 | Barnard College | 1345 |
58 | Stevens Institute of Technology | 1340 |
58 | Colorado College (2) | 1340 |
58 | Bard College at Simon's Rock (9) | 1340 |
61 | Davidson College | 1335 |
61 | Mount Holyoke College (2) | 1335 |
63 | Colby College (2) | 1330 |
63 | Pitzer College (2) | 1330 |
63 | Connecticut College (2) | 1330 |
63 | St. John's College (NM) (2) | 1330 |
67 | Kenyon College | 1325 |
67 | University of Richmond | 1325 |
69 | Lehigh University | 1320 |
69 | University of Miami | 1320 |
69 | Southern Methodist University | 1320 |
69 | Bryn Mawr College (2) | 1320 |
69 | St. John's College (MD) (2) | 1320 |
69 | Wheaton College (IL) | 1320 |
75 | Wake Forest University (2) | 1315 |
75 | Whitman College | 1315 |
77 | Worcester Polytechnic Institute (2) | 1310 |
77 | Villanova University | 1310 |
79 | University of Tulsa | 1305 |
79 | Bucknell University | 1305 |
79 | College of the Holy Cross (2) | 1305 |
79 | Union College (NY) (2) | 1305 |
79 | Franklin and Marshall College (2) | 1305 |
79 | St. Olaf College | 1305 |
85 | Boston University | 1300 |
85 | Brigham Young University-?Provo | 1300 |
85 | Lafayette College | 1300 |
85 | Occidental College | 1300 |
85 | Rhodes College | 1300 |
85 | Hillsdale College | 1300 |
85 | Santa Clara University | 1300 |
92 | George Washington University | 1295 |
93 | Centre College | 1285 |
93 | Gettysburg College | 1285 |
93 | Denison University (9) | 1285 |
93 | Lewis & Clark College (2) | 1285 |
93 | Bennington College (9) | 1285 |
98 | Dickinson College (2) | 1280 |
98 | Bard College (2) | 1280 |
100 | Sarah Lawrence College (2) | 1270 |