The ReitOR Agency has for the first time posted its ratings of colleges and universities in the Volga Federal District of Russia based on criteria of public assessment, having designated institutions in the following priority areas of training: machine building, energy, communications and telecommunications, management and economics, and gas and petrochemistry. The administrators of the Ministry of Education and Science believe that the agency's information is very useful and can have an influence on the reputation of the institutions and the level of demand among secondary school graduates. It needs to be pointed out that in this rating process, particular areas of training (the faculties and departments) are examined rather than the institutions as a whole. For this reason, the same institution of higher learning may have different ratings depending on the area. The main criterion selected was the professional potential of the upper-division students, which served as the basis for plotting the overall ratings. Other criteria employed included students' professional training and ability to adapt, and the institution's public importance. The institutions that turned out to be leaders in the district were in Samara, Penza, and Ufa. Separate attention was focused on the criterion of an institution's regional potential, indicating which institution is the most attractive to secondary school graduates from other regions. The leaders based on this indicator are Izhevsk State Technical University, the Viatka Socioeconomic Institute, the Urals Institute of the Humanities, and the Volga State Academy of Telecommunications and Information Science. The information base for the rankings was provided by the sociological survey "System of Public Assessments of the Professional Qualities of Upper-Division Students of Higher Educational Institutions as Job Seekers in the Labor Market." Results of this district-wide survey are discussed. (Contains 2 tables and 5 figures.)