West Virginia University has once again found itself on a national ranking list. CollegeAtlas chose WVU as No. 11 of 100 on their “A-List.”

Many college ranking lists place emphasis on and evaluate expensive, prestigious universities and colleges. However, CollegeAtlas is now providing a reliable source for students to find schools with higher acceptance rates, affordable tuition and quality courses all in one.

Branden Neish, general manager of CollegeAtlas, said he has always been interested in school rankings and found his coworkers were eager to produce a list that would be beneficial to a broader audience.

“I knew I wanted to do something where the list could really resonate with millions of potential students rather than thousands,” Neish said. “There are thousands of students applying to Ivy League schools, which are typically the ones that are put at the top of other lists. But what about the millions and millions of students who apply to other schools?”

Neisch said the method for calculating the rankings of schools for the “A-List” consisted of three main components: accessibility, academic quality and affordability.

The list features schools with higher acceptance rates and enrollment numbers. Schools with larger enrollment size benefitted slightly more from the score calculation because of their ability to not only admit but also educate large numbers of students.

WVU has an acceptance rate of 85 percent, with an average enrollment number of 29,000.

To calculate the school’s tuition ranking, the company based its research on in-state tuition. Forms of aid, including federal, state and institutional, are not taken into account because the factors vary across the board of students.

However, Neish said the universities on the “A-List” have out-of-state tuition rates that are fairly affordable compared to schools featured on other lists.

Academic quality has the highest weight of all three of the factors taken into account. This calculation is based on data reported by U.S. News, which Neish claimed is the “gold standard for the academic side of things.”

Months ago, while the company was at work creating the “A-List,” President Barack Obama spoke out regarding the need for more attention to be paid to schools that deliver the most “bang for your buck.”

“Other rankings have gone in and tried to do a bang-for-your-buck-type rating, but there are too many flaws to the most common methodologies they’ve used,” Neish said.

One of these flaws is the creators of the list will focus their research on a student who has a very high financial need, qualifying for the most generous aid package possible.

With this criteria, Ivy League schools come out on top of these rankings because they have much more money to give to students, especially those who come from low-income backgrounds.

“That’s great,” Neish said. “But the problem is where you have an intersection of someone who comes from a very low income background and has a high GPA and test scores to the point where they are able to get into those Ivy League schools. The intersection is very small.”

Therefore, according to Neish, the results of the rankings are neither true nor relevant for a majority of students in the country.

The full “A-List” can be viewed at www.collegeatlas.org, along with other unbiased, detailed information about schools, degrees and other academic programs.