Ivy league schools ranked by how smart their students are

Portia Arthur

October 9, 2015 5:19 PM

We recently ranked the smallest colleges in America, and Ivy League schools were featured prominently at the top of the list, with four breaking into the overall top 10.

Ivy league schools ranked by how smart their students are

How do America's oldest and most elite universities compare in terms of sheer student brainpower?

We decided to see how these storied institutions stack up against each other. It turns out Harvard and Yale tie for No. 1.

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 the schools report to US news.

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.

Here are America's Ivy League schools ranked by student brainpower:

Portia Arthur