Although U.S. News & World Report's official release date for its 2007 "America's Best Colleges" data is today and the official print edition release is Monday, some bookstores were selling them on Thursday.

U.S. News & World Report spokeswoman Cynthia Powell said that happens every year.

"Shipping those books out and coordinating a release day is a challenge," she said. "We don't have, like, bookstore Gestapos out there. ... It's no big deal."

Despite criticism within higher education circles that the criteria used for the rankings is misguided and class-biased, the annual issue has become a cash cow for U.S. News. It usually sells about 30 to 40 percent better than a typical issue.

While the major Virginia universities didn't move much -- Radford University moved up two spots, Virginia Tech gained one spot and the University of Virginia fell one position lower -- Virginia schools did gain some notoriety in the 288-page issue.

There's a three-page article in the magazine on Liberty University in Lynchburg and the University of Virginia at Wise was ranked as the liberal arts university with the lowest average debt load.

Conversely, Washington and Lee University in Lexington was named as the least economically diverse of the top 25 liberal arts colleges in the nation. UVa, despite being listed among "best buys," is third from the bottom in economic diversity among top-25 national universities.

Nationally, Princeton has the No. 1 spot all to itself after sharing the distinction with Harvard last year. The University of Chicago was the biggest gainer among the top 10 while Duke and the University of Pennsylvania dropped three spots.

The magazine ranked 40 Virginia schools and parsed them into several different categories.

"It's a little like Lake Wobegone," Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said about the various categories. "Everybody's above average."