Who's Smarter - MIT or Caltech Students? Exploring Top 25 Smartest Colleges

Free IQ Range Report

1. What can I do with this table?
   You can see which Universities would be more likely to admit you based on SAT scores. If you have not taken an SAT yet or if you are from a country that does not administer the SAT you can use your estimated IQ test score to determine what your SAT score might be.
2. Does SAT matter anymore? I read some Colleges including Berkeley stopped using SAT scores.
   Yes SAT matters as most Universities/Colleges use it. Some colleges made SAT optional during Covid and few decided to not accept SAT scores anymore, to be more flexible in who to admit.
3. Are SAT and IQ test scores correlated?
   Yes. The coefficient of correlation was reported to be greater than 0.8, which means there is a strong correlation.
4. Why SAT and IQ Test scores correlate with each other. In other words, why a high IQ person also scores high in SAT and why a person scoring high in SAT also scores high in IQ Test?
   Because SAT is actually based on an IQ test. You can read about it here.
5. How strong is a correlation coefficient of 0.8?
   Similar to how smoking correlates to lung cancer and how exercise correlates to cardiovascular health. Meaning people who smoke more are more likely to get lung cancer, people who exercise regularly are more likely to have healthier hearths, people who have higher IQ score are more likely to get higher SAT Scores. All have correlation factor of around 0.8. More technical explanations of correlation factor can be seen at Professor Ratner's paper.
6. Is there a scientific publication showing the correlation data?
   Yes. You can check the Figure 1 of this paper published by Professor Douglas K. Detterman in the journal "Psychological Science" which includes data, graphs and analysis.
7. Does this mean all students from a higher ranking school are smarter compared to all students from lower ranked Universities?
   No. These are average values. But you can expect a randomly selected student from the higher ranked school to be smarter than a randomly selected student at a lower ranked school.
8. Does it mean most students of higher ranked school are smarter than most students of lower ranked school?
   Mostly yes. Unless lower ranked school admitted students with low scores more intensely. Then, its distribution curve of scores will be left skewed. Standard deviation considers square value of each value’s difference to the mean. So most students of such schools may still be smarter compared to the students of schools that we ranked higher. UC Berkeley is a strong candidate to fit to this assumption.
9. Is the correlation of SAT and IQ test score strong for all IQ test scores?
   No. Correlation is weaker at the very high and very low SAT scores. This is typical in statistical analysis as edge values will have lower precision. For example, a Caltech student may be smarter than an MIT student, even though MIT ranks slightly higher in this ranking. Also, high SAT scores will tend to predict lower IQ test scores than it should be and the lower SAT scores will tend to predict higher IQ test scores than it should be, since IQ test scores tend to display regression to the mean for edge values.
10. Which mathematical formula did you use?
    IQ = 39.545 + 0.068*(SAT score) from Murray, C. (2013). Coming Apart, page 375.
11. How can I know my IQ test score estimate?
    You can use our IQ test score estimation product.
12. What is the average IQ of Harvard students?
    Average IQ of Harvard students is 142.
13. What is the IQ of students at MIT?
Average IQ of students at MIT is 144.
Are MIT students smart?
Yes, MIT students have an average IQ of 144 making them ranked second after Caltech students who have an average IQ of 145.
What is the smartest college in the world?
Smartest College in the world is California Institute of Technology (Caltech) with average IQ of 145.
What is the #1 college in the US?
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is the #1 college in US as it has the smartest students with average IQ estimation of 145.
Which Ivy League is considered the best?
Columbia University ranks slight higher compared to Harvard and Princeton in our list with average IQ of 143. However, harvard is considered to be better compared to Columbia and Princeton with its long standing reputation.
What college has the most successful students?
California Institute of Technology (Caltech) students are the most succesful students as Caltech requires the highest average SAT score for admission and Caltech students are the smartest students in US with average IQ of 145.