The University of Virginia held its ground as the No. 2 public university in the nation while Virginia Tech fell two spots to No. 34 in the U.S. News & World Report undergraduate rankings released today.

There are few surprises for Virginia schools in the magazine's 2006 edition of "America's Best Colleges," which is among the most closely watched college rankings in the nation.

Among national universities, which offer a broad undergraduate curricula but also doctoral programs, UVa was once again edged out by the University of California at Berkeley for the top spot among public schools. UVa ranked 23rd among all national universities, both public and private.

Locally, Tech tied for 34th in the public list - down from 32nd last year. Tech was tied at No. 78 among all national universities with North Carolina State University, Clemson University, Baylor University, St. Louis University and the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Virginia Military Institute ranked as the top public liberal arts college in the nation for the fifth consecutive year.

Brig. Gen. Charles Brower, deputy superintendent for academics and dean of the faculty at VMI, said in a statement that the school's consistently high performance in its category was no accident.

"No ranking system can capture the true quality of a college, but this ranking does indicate some of the tremendous work and resources we have dedicated to building the fine faculty and academic program that allows us to provide some of the brightest students in America with a world-class education," Brower said.

James Madison University took top honors from the magazine among public master's universities in the South, and No. 2 among all master's universities.

The magazine also ranked several individual academic programs, including engineering and business.

Virginia Tech's engineering program tied for 14th in the nation among doctoral-granting institutions. That is up from 19th in the magazine's rankings last year.

Richard Benson, who just began his tenure as dean of Tech's College of Engineering last week, said he was "thrilled" that the university moved up in the influential publication. But Benson said he tries not to put so much stake in the rankings that it begins to affect decisions about running the program.

"I don't want the rankings to be the be-all, end-all," said Benson, who came to Tech from Penn State. "Something I do believe in is knowing who your peers are and trying to emulate their best practices."

College officials nationwide often have a love-hate relationship with the more popular rankings. While quick to post the positive rankings on their institutions' Web sites, school officials often simultaneously criticize the reports as too subjective or providing an incomplete look.

That was a tone set by Washington and Lee University's acting president, Harlan Beckley, responding to the university's 14th-place ranking among all liberal arts colleges.

"How do you measure the importance of our tradition of honor to the learning experience, or the close relationship of teachers to their students? In fact, the most important element, the quality of teaching, can't be quantified at all," Beckley said in a statement.

"Nevertheless, U.S. News and World Report has become an important informational tool for parents and students, and we are pleased that they have recognized our excellence for many years."