Does your school make the cut? AP Photo/John Raoux If you want to be surrounded with some of the smartest students in the US and get the most bang for your buck, you may want to consider one of the following universities.

From our recent list of the smartest colleges in America, we pulled out the top 100 public schools. These colleges offer brainpower and affordability, since the average annual cost of attending an in-state public school is $8,500, according to US News & World Report. Compare that to the average private school cost of $30,500 — a difference of $22,000 a year.

In order to determine a school’s overall smarts, Jonathan Wai, a Duke University Talent Identification Program researcher, analyzed the average standardized test scores that schools report to US News. (Those that did not report scores are not included.)

These tests are often criticized, but research shows that both the SAT and ACT are good measures of general cognitive ability and give a reasonable snapshot of the brainpower level of that school.

ACT scores were translated into SAT scores (math + verbal) using this concordance table, so that all schools could be compared using one metric. Then, an average of the 25th and 75th percentile was computed (see a full description of the methodology and limitations here).

On the following ranking, a (2) next to the school's name indicates that some or all students aren't required to supply scores; a (3) indicates that the school did not supply all students it has scores for, or did not tell US News if it had; a (4) indicates that the data is from a previous year, rather than from the most recent year; and a (9) indicates that the school may not require scores from all applicants and that it may not have submitted data for all students.

Here are the smartest public colleges in America:

Smarts Rank School Average SAT 1 Georgia Institute of Technology 1385 2 University of California-Berkeley 1375 3 College of William and Mary 1365 4 United States Air Force Academy 1360 5 University of Virginia 1355 6 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 1340 6 Colorado School of Mines 1340 8 University of California-Los Angeles 1320 9 University of Maryland-College Park 1310 10 University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill 1305 11 Ohio State University-Columbus 1300 12 Binghamton University-SUNY 1294 13 University of California-San Diego 1290 14 University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign 1285 14 New College of Florida 1285 16 United States Military Academy (3) 1283 17 United States Naval Academy 1280 18 United States Coast Guard Academy (3) 1275 19 University of Pittsburgh 1270 20 SUNY-Geneseo 1269 21 United States Merchant Marine Academy 1267 22 University of Wisconsin-Madison 1265 22 University of Florida 1265 22 University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 1265 22 Missouri University of Science & Technology 1265 26 University of Texas-Austin 1260 26 University of Texas-Dallas 1260 28 University of California-Santa Barbara 1250 28 Stony Brook University-SUNY 1250 30 Clemson University 1245 30 Miami University-Oxford 1245 30 Truman State University 1245 33 University of Georgia 1240 34 North Carolina State University-Raleigh 1235 34 College of New Jersey 1235 36 University of Washington 1230 36 University of Connecticut 1230 36 CUNY-Baruch College 1230 39 Florida State University 1225 39 Auburn University 1225 39 California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo (3) 1225 42 Virginia Tech 1220 43 University of California-Davis 1210 43 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-New Brunswick 1210 43 University of Massachusetts-Amherst 1210 43 University of Maryland-Baltimore County 1210 47 University of Colorado-Boulder 1205 47 University of Tennessee 1205 47 University of South Carolina 1205 47 Michigan Technological University 1205 51 Purdue University-West Lafayette 1200 52 University of Delaware 1195 52 University of North Carolina-Asheville 1195 54 St. Mary's College of Maryland (3) 1190 54 University of North Carolina-Wilmington 1190 56 University of Vermont 1185 56 University of Alabama 1185 56 University of Oklahoma 1185 56 University of Alabama-Huntsville 1185 56 New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology 1185 61 Texas A&M University-College Station 1180 61 University of Central Florida 1180 63 Pennsylvania State University-University Park 1175 63 Indiana University-Bloomington 1175 65 SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry 1170 65 University of South Florida 1170 65 CUNY-Hunter College 1170 68 University of California-Irvine 1165 68 University of Iowa 1165 68 Michigan State University (3) 1165 68 University of Missouri 1165 68 Louisiana State University-Baton Rouge 1165 68 University of Arkansas 1165 68 University of Minnesota-Morris (3) 1165 75 College of Charleston (3) 1160 75 Christopher Newport University (2) 1160 77 University at Buffalo-SUNY 1155 77 Salisbury University (9) 1155 77 University of North Florida 1155 80 George Mason University (2) 1150 80 Florida International University 1150 80 Virginia Military Institute 1150 83 University of Nebraska-Lincoln 1145 83 Iowa State University 1145 83 University of Kansas 1145 83 Arizona State University-Tempe (2) 1145 83 University of Cincinnati 1145 83 University of Kentucky 1145 83 Oklahoma State University 1145 83 University of Alabama-Birmingham 1145 83 University of Louisville (3) 1145 83 James Madison University 1145 83 University of Wisconsin-La Crosse 1145 94 University of California-Santa Cruz 1140 94 New Jersey Institute of Technology 1140 94 University of Houston 1140 94 Georgia College & State University 1140 98 Appalachian State University 1135 99 University of Massachusetts-Lowell 1130 100 Colorado State University 1125 100 University of Wyoming 1125 100 SUNY-New Paltz 1125 100 CUNY-Queens College 1125 100 University of Michigan-Dearborn 1125

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly included the University of San Diego, a private institution. The list has been reranked and updated with a new total of 104 schools, due to the five-way tie for No. 100.