Overall rank.
In-state rankings are based on data provided by more than 500 public, four-year colleges and universities to Peterson's, a division of the Thompson Corp., and supplemented by our own reporting. Then we narrowed the list to the 200 most selective universities, based on entrance exam scores of the 2002-03 freshman class.

To narrow the list to the final 100, we looked at a variety of additional quality measures, including admission rates, student-faculty ratios, four- and six-year graduation rates, how much each college spends per student on instruction and how much each spends on maintaining its library resources.

After the top 100 were selected on quality alone, they were ranked on a combination of quality and cost measures: total cost for in-state students, the average percentage of financial need met by aid, the average cost for students with need after subtracting grants (but not loans), the average cost for a student without need after subtracting merit-based grants and the average amount of debt a student accumulates before graduation.

We repeated the procedure using out-of-state total costs and average costs after aid to determine out-of-state rankings.

The formula placed greater weight on quality (two-thirds) than on cost (one-third) because "value" is not synonymous with "cheap."

Quality.
SAT or ACT shows the percentage of the 2002-2003 freshman class that scored above 600 on the verbal component of the SAT I and the percentage of those students who scored above 600 on the math component, separated by a slash, or the percentage that scored above 24 on the ACT. The type of score (SAT or ACT) reflects the test submitted by the majority of admitted students.

Students/faculty ratio is the average number of students for each faculty member.

Four-year graduation rate is the percentage of 1996-97 freshmen who earned a bachelor's degree in four years or fewer.

Six-year graduation rate is the percentage of 1996-97 freshmen who earned a bachelor's degree within six years.

Cost.
Total in-state costs include tuition, mandatory fees, estimated cost of books and room and board for 2003-04 freshmen.

Total out-of-state costs adds the surcharge that most state colleges charge nonresidents.

Cost after aid is the 2003-04 avearge total cost for in-state and out-of-state students minus the average need-based gift award (exluding loans and work-study income.

Average debt at graduation is the average amount of education debt owed by 2002 graduates who borrowed to pay the bills.