9 Minnesota Schools Make Newsweek Magazine's Top 500

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Newsweek Magazine published its list Monday of America's top schools for 2014, and nine Minnesota schools made the list of 500.

Newsweek bases its school rankings on the institutions that do the best job of preparing their students for college. The data included a college readiness score, the percent of students that actually go onto school, the school's graduation rate and the poverty percentage of the area the school is in.

In Minnesota, the nine schools that made the list of the top 500 are all in the Twin Cities metro. Of those nine, seven made the top half of the 500-school list.

The top Minnesota school on the list is the Twin Cities Academy in St. Paul, which came in at 42nd. The school had a college readiness score of 97.25 pecent. The school also has a 99.8 percent of its students go to college, and 99.67 percent of students graduate.

Woodbury High School came in on the list at 45th overall. Their college readiness score was 97.06 percent, nearly 80 percent of students go onto college and they have a graduation rate of better than 94 percent. Orono High School was listed at 51st. They had a college readiness score of 96.66 percent with nearly 82 percent of students heading to college. They also graduate nearly 90 percent of students.

The other Minnesota schools to make the list included Mounds View (100),Mound Westonka (104), Mahtomedi (176), Wayzata (187), Minneapolis Southwest (412) and Eastview (422).