Victoria McKenzie/ Winonan

Can colleges be assessed by certain criteria and ranked accurately?  Many organizations claim that they can be.

The U.S. News and World Report released its 2015 listings for “Best Colleges,” and Winona State University was ranked second for public universities in Minnesota.

The U.S. News and World Report uses a computer-generated scientific calculation to rank colleges in the United States.

Carl Stange, Winona State director of admissions, acknowledges the fact Winona State advertises its ranking because it gives the school a competitive edge.

“We practice the principle that a student needs to find the right fit to be successful,” Stange said.

Different factors are taken into account: the average GPAs and ACT scores of incoming freshman, faculty credentials, endowments, alumni connections, average class sizes, educational opportunities and available technology.

Another key piece to the equation is a survey that each college must complete. The survey is given to the academic affairs, university relations, admissions and enrollment management departments of each institution.

In the survey, departments rank their schools on various aspects, as well as rank schools in which they share relations with and comment on how they would improve those programs.

The survey component of the ranking system serves to broaden the scope and take more aspects into consideration for the calculation but has a few drawbacks.

First, the survey needs to be well coordinated at each institution because if all forms are not completed for an institution, its ranking drops. It begs the question of how many schools are inaccurately ranked due to human error.

Another faulty element within the survey is that it relies simply on professionalism, in the hope that the institutions are honest.  Although it is tempting to be optimistic about peoples’ sincerity, there have been instances of misrepresentation within the survey, causing people to wonder how many times this has occurred without the discovery of such events.

Stange said he believes it is up to the students and their parents to decide how much merit they attribute to the ranking of schools.

Staci Blair, a freshman at Winona State, admits that she “did not know Winona’s rank, just heard great things through word of mouth.”

Although the rankings are public knowledge, not everyone goes out of their way to include them in their decisions on where to attend college.

Along with being ranked for public universities in Minnesota, Winona State is ranked 16th for public universities in the Midwest and 61st for regional universities in the Midwest.