Walton High School has been ranked the 3rd best public high school in Georgia and 109th best in the nation, according to an annual list produced by Newsweek magazine and The Daily Beast.

Pope High School is 10th in Georgia and 331st in the nation in the Newsweek rankings, which simply measure success at producing college-ready graduates.

The rankings come less than two weeks after U.S. News & World Report used a different methodology to rate Lassiter seventh in the state and 311th in the nation.

Walton's ranking is down from 67th nationally in 2011, while Lassiter High School is ranked 20th in Georgia and No. 800 in the nation. Pope and Lassiter were both unranked in last year's Newsweek's rankings. 

Pope was shut out of the U.S. News rankings, which try to judge high schools’ success at exceeding expectations based on demographics.

Pope has a slight edge on Lassiter in the test scores, and Lassiter has a slightly higher number of advanced exams taken per student. The schools are even on graduation rate at 98 percent.

The big difference between them, and the stat that hurts Lassiter most in the Newsweek rankings, is the percentage of graduates headed for college.

At 80 percent, Lassiter is lower than any other Georgia school in the top 1,000. Walton reported that 99 percent of its grads went on to college, and Pope said 98 percent.

Which rankings do you trust more? Tell us in the comments below.

Newsweek used six statistics as self-reported by more than 2,300 high schools:

• Graduation rate (25 percent), calculated by dividing the 2011 graduates by the number of ninth-graders in 2007, adjusting for transfers.
• Percentage of graduates accepted to a two- or four-year college in the fall after graduation (25 percent).
• The number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Advanced International Certificate of Education exams taken per student (25 percent).
• Average SAT and/or ACT score (10 percent).
• Average score on AP, IB and AICE exams (10 percent).
• Number of AP, IB and AICE courses offered per student (5 percent).

Newsweek used numbers from the 2010-11 school year; U.S. News used 2009-10 stats.

In addition to Walton, Lassiter and Pope, three other Cobb high schools made Newsweek’s list this year, compared with two on last year’s list of the top 500 public high schools in the nation:

• Harrison, 17th in Georgia and 665th in the nation (489th in 2011).
• Kennesaw Mountain, 22nd in the state and 859th in the United States (unranked last year).