U.S. News and World Report is preparing to release the 2016 edition of its Best Colleges ranking.

Whereas The Princeton Review focuses more on individual aspects of the college experience for a suite of rankings, U.S. News aims to rank the nation's colleges and universities for their academic standing. However, both publications divvy up their rankings by qualifiers including region, institution type, and more.

The magazine published its first Best Colleges ranking in 1983, but it did not become an annual feature until two years later.

In recent years, the Best Colleges ranking have become widely shared on the Internet. MinOnline.com reported in Sept. 2013 that the Best Colleges ranking for 2014 brought USNews.com 18.9 million page views in one day, thanks in large part to Google and Facebook. The rankings were also shared on more than 3,000 different websites.

On Sept. 9, U.S. News will unveil its National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges rankings, and more. The magazine will also release a guidebook later in the month to hit shelves Sept. 29.

You can learn more about the Best Colleges rankings by reading a series of articles by Bob Morse, U.S. News' chief data strategist and the rankings' overseer.

"I personally don't feel any superpowers," he told The Washington Post last year, "[but] I'm aware it's a heavy responsibility... We're like the 800-pound gorilla of higher education."