Two schools in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools were judged among the top high schools in the country by U.S. News & World Report, including West Forsyth High School, which ranked second in North Carolina.

West Forsyth ranked 378th nationally, earning it a gold medal for being ranked among the top 500 schools in the United States. It was one of just two high schools in the state to earn a gold medal.

Winston-Salem Preparatory Academy earned a silver medal for being ranked in the top 2,000 nationally. It was ranked 34th in North Carolina and 1,986th in the U.S.

U.S. News looked at more than 19,400 public schools in the U.S. and ranked them according to how they perform on state assessments and how well they prepare students for college. The data is from the 2011-12 school year.

The magazine first determined whether a school’s students performed better than expected for the average student in the state. It then examined whether a school’s least advantaged students performed better than the average of similar students in the state. Finally, U.S. News judged how well schools prepared students for college based on Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate data. The full methodology can be found here.

West Forsyth and Glenn High School also were included earlier this month in The Washington Post’s list of America’s Most Challenging High Schools. The list is compiled by the Post’s education columnist Jay Mathews. Schools are judged by the number of college-level tests given at a school in a school year divided by the number of graduates that year.

West Forsyth ranked 16th in the state on the list, and Glenn ranked 58th in the state.

For more information about U.S. News’ rankings, please visit http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools.

For more information about the Post’s rankings, please visit http://apps.washingtonpost.com/local/highschoolchallenge/.