George Mason High School was ranked No. 19 in a list of the best public high schools in the nation released by U.S. News & World Report today.

Using a methodology developed by U.S. News, the American Institutes for Research and U.S. News analyzed data from 21,776 public high schools across the nation.

Schools were ranked based upon a three-step process that determined if their students performed above the state average, if their minority and low-income students performed better than similar students in the state, and how well students performed on college-readiness exams.

Of Virginia schools, George Mason was topped only by the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which was ranked second on the list. Other area schools that made the top 100 were George C. Marshall High School (No. 55), McLean High School (No. 85), James W. Robinson Jr. Secondary School (No. 88), and Langley High School (No. 98).