StudyBlue Ranks U.S. Colleges and Universities With the 'Smartest Studiers'

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 29, 2014) - StudyBlue, the leading crowdsourced learning app, today released its first annual ranking of the 'Smartest Studiers' at U.S. colleges and universities. The report analyzes data on the study habits and success rates of 1.3 million students at 203 universities who use StudyBlue to create, share and study material to master any subject.

As the cost of higher education continues to rise at a ghastly rate and new online education providers threaten to make on-campus learning obsolete, the methods of evaluating a college education are changing. Prospective students must look beyond the traditional metrics to decide where they can receive a quality education without breaking the bank. By identifying the colleges and universities across the U.S. that attract the learners with the best study habits, StudyBlue's report aims to inform prospective students about the learning environment at their potential schools.

"Higher education is a huge investment and we wanted to provide another dimension to the standard way of evaluating colleges and universities," said StudyBlue founder and CEO Christopher Klundt. "Typical metrics like test scores, graduation rates and average class size don't necessarily capture a campus learning environment. By evaluating how students study and how much they study, this report challenges our traditional understanding of what it means to be a successful student."

The study considers data from cumulative usage of StudyBlue over three years through August 2014 on college campuses with at least 1,000 users. Institutions are limited to those that appear on the U.S. News & World Report's National University Rankings. The findings are divided into four categories:

• Smartest Studiers: State schools dominated the list of twenty schools with the highest percentage of students reaching A-level mastery of their material on StudyBlue. At the top was Indiana State University, which saw 78 percent of its users reaching mastery, followed by the University of Wyoming and Louisiana Tech University.
• Ivy vs. State: Data indicates smart studiers often choose to stay in-state, finding academic success without the Ivy League pricetag. Tuition costs $8,416 per year at Indiana State University compared to $41,820 per year at Princeton University, the Ivy League university with the highest percentage of StudyBlue users (52 percent) reaching mastery.
• Nerdiest Notetakers: StudyBlue learners have used and shared over 100 million digital notecards created by other learners. Washington State University Pullman topped the list of twenty schools with the most popular digital notecards used by students outside of their own schools.
• Degree vs. Degree: Contrary to popular belief that engineering students always have the most work, StudyBlue found language majors, such as Slavic, Korean, Latin and Japanese, are the ones with their noses buried in their notes. Statistics and Organic Chemistry are disciplines for which students study the fewest notecards.
  
  

For more information, visit StudyBlue's blog or click here to view the full visual report.

About StudyBlue
StudyBlue is a crowdsourced learning app used by nearly 6 million people to master any subject. Students and lifelong learners alike can create, share and compare notes pulling from the largest and fastest-growing library of online study material, containing more than 250 million user-generated digital notecards covering every topic from Portuguese to Psychology to Pilates. StudyBlue allows people to study anytime, anywhere across all of your Web, iOS and Android devices. For more information, visit http://www.studyblue.com.