Business Insider, a business, celebrity, and technology news website, ranked LTU among the 610 "Smartest Colleges in America" in 2016. The publication ranked America's colleges and universities based on brainpower, as reflected by the school's average standardized test scores.

"These tests are often criticized,” noted the Business Insider, “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. Therefore, the scores that schools report to U.S. News & World Report give a reasonable snapshot of a school's overall smarts.”