We’re No. 1! And No. 2, 4-6, 17, 20, and 22!!!

This week, as millions of college students headed back to school, Newsweek/The Daily Beast released its College Rankings 2011, with categories including Most Service-Oriented, Most Beautiful, Future CEOs, and — most important to us — Best College Food, honoring those schools that “go above and beyond to make it great.”

We are proud to say that on that list of 25, Bon Appétit Management Company teams feed a whopping eight of them:

Wheaton Executive Chef Patrick Cassata

1. St. Olaf College
2. Pitzer College
4. Claremont McKenna College
5. Roger Williams University
6. Wheaton College (IL)
17. Seattle University
20. Washington University in St. Louis
22. Vanguard University of Southern California

We also manage a lot of other great schools that mysteriously didn’t make the list. Here’s Newsweek’s methodology:

To pick the best schools for foodies, we took into account the quality of both on- and off-campus fare. We started with College Prowler’s “Best Campus Dining” list and weighted those student-opinion scores at 45%.  Then we added in the number of restaurants per capita in the surrounding area (25%; based on Citysearch and U.S. Census data), the percent of each college’s food budget spent on local/organic food, when available (20%; from The Princeton Review survey of schools).  Bonus points (10%) were awarded according to whether and how well a college ranked on the Parents and Colleges “Best College Eats”and Her Campus’s “Top 10 College Dining Halls” lists.

Congrats to all our teams busy keeping college students well nourished and energized!