The independent newspaper of the University of Iowa community since 1868

The Daily Iowan

The independent newspaper of the University of Iowa community since 1868

The Daily Iowan

The independent newspaper of the University of Iowa community since 1868

The Daily Iowan

Iowa City and surrounding area named among smartest cities in the U.S.

Iowa City and the surrounding area are among the smartest in the country, according to a recent study from Lumosity, a San Francisco-based brain-training company.

The study, released Tuesday, used data from more than 3 million people in the United States between the ages of 18 and 75 who had played several Lumosity brain-training games across five cognitive areas: flexibility, processing speed, memory, attention, and problem solving. The scores were then ranked based on location.

The city of Iowa City proper was dubbed 25th out of 1,309 cities, while the core-based statistical area came in at No, 4 of 478 regions. A designated marketing area of Cedar Rapids-Waterloo-Iowa City-Dubuque was named third of 208, while the combined statistical area of Cedar Rapids-Iowa City notched to sixth out of 157.

The findings revealed that a number of college towns made the cut, including six Big Ten cities: Urbana, Ill., Ann Arbor, Mich., State College, Pa., Madison, Wis., Bloomington, Ind., and East Lansing, Mich.

Stanford, Calif., Princeton, N.J., Storrs Mansfield, Conn., Evanston, Ill., and Cambridge, Mass., rounded out the top five. Ames, which came in at No. 28 on the core-based statistical area list, was the only city in Iowa besides Iowa City to make the top 50.

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