The season for applying for college financial aid has begun, and with it comes a new survey from Kiplinger’s Personal Finance on the nation’s 100 best educational values for public colleges.

The survey, published online and in the February print edition of Kiplinger’s, ranks UNC Asheville 36th in the nation as a best value for in-state students and 47th in the nation as a best value for out-of-state students.

Academic quality carries more weight than costs in the analysis, Kiplinger’s said.

As its first step in determining the rankings, Kiplinger’s narrowed a list of 500 public four-year colleges and universities to 120 schools, based on several measures of academic quality reported for the 2005-06 academic year, including freshman SAT scores and student-faculty ratios.

Then Kiplinger’s ranked each school based on financial factors, including total cost for in-state students (tuition, mandatory fees, room and board, and estimated expenses for books), average percentage of need met by aid, and average debt accumulated before graduation.

The resulting 100 best values include UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, Appalachian State University, UNC Wilmington and UNC Greensboro.

To see the entire survey, go to http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/colleges/.

UNC Asheville has already earned a “best buy” ranking from the Fiske Guide to Colleges and The Princeton Review, and U.S. News & World Report ranks UNC Asheville as the fifth best public liberal arts college in the nation.