Our wing poll consists of us ordering wings from the major area pizza places and rating them on a scale of 1 to 10 based in a variety of categories. These included taste, appearance, spiciness, and meatiness, among others.

We then proceeded to call up a variety of places with our core seeming to be those which consistently flyer the RPI campus. We learned that Sunday was not a very good day to do this as many places were not open or wouldn’t deliver wings.

However, we were able to rank 10 popular pizza places, including for the first time our own Rensselaer Union.

Last year we did a wings and cheese sticks poll, however this year we decided to rank only chicken wings. However, we ranked two flavors of wings this time, the mild and the hottest flavor they had.

Originally, we wanted to include the name of the hottest wings in the rankings, as most places have unique names, but this wasn’t possible.

Not one single place we contacted on that fateful Sunday evening had a special name for their hottest flavor. When asked the million-dollar question, "What’s the name of your hottest flavor," every single business replied "Hot."

I was expecting creativity in this department. Hudson River Red, Gut-Wrenching Atomic, and Three Mile Island all came to mind, however, "hot" was as creative as these bustling entrepreneurs in the City of Uncle Sam could come up with. So, this criterion was eliminated from the selection process.

In the mild wings, the results were pretty surprising.

Amazingly, Domino’s wings towered above the rest this year. These wings were the first we received and it seemed like the night just went downhill from there. Domino’s was able to get a 7.29 overall score out of a possible 10, meaning there was much room for improvement.

Next in second and third were Congress Street Pizza and I Love New York Pizzeria. Each collected an overall score of 6.43 and 6.34, respectively. These wings were still fairly bearable, but from here it dropped off quickly.

Rounding out the bottom were Sandra Marie’s Pizza finishing second to last and as expected, lower level dining of the Rensselaer Union dead last.

In the hot category, Congress Street again followed Domino’s. However, group consensus was the wings were not hot! Most of the wings we tasted throughout the night were the same spiciness whether they were mild or hot. Disappointing as this was, they were all still ranked.

The two at the bottom of this category were Mareno’s and Red Front.

This year I decided to use a little economics to further help you decide on the best wing joint in Troy. I multiplied the price by the overall score to factor in value for your dollar. This helped to level the playing field as most of the better and meatier wings cost more than the less expensive ones.

Domino’s superior taste and Hoosick Pizza’s tremendous value allowed for them to round out the top two in this section. The Union’s low price still didn’t seem to salvage its low score in the taste areas. It still ended up last.

Finally I factored in the delivery time or in the Union’s case preparation time for a called in order. When the bang for your buck rating is divided by the percentage of an hour it took to be delivered, you arrive at the total value for a wing. This last column should be referenced when you’re in a hurry for a good wing.

In this area, Domino’s towered above the rest with Hoosick Pizza taking up a distant second. Because of the superior preparation time of the Union’s wings it was finally able to pull out of the bottom spot, and Red Front entered it.

I felt for the many participants in the wing poll. Comments like "I wouldn’t feed these to my dog" and "This is chicken?" were heard all around the room. Another student commented on the Union’s wings "I wouldn’t eat these if you gave me $1,000 each." Many were disappointed that Domino’s wings were the best. "It is a sad day when Domino’s wins," commented one taste tester.