When it comes to college rankings, Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker knows resistance is futile.

Hincker has been in charge of university relations at Tech since 1990 and witnessed the boom in college rankings over the past 15 years.

While he still feels that large national universities don't need to rely heavily on rankings to burnish their reputation, Tech no longer tries to be "holier than thou" and completely ignore them, he said.

"People would come up to us and say, 'William and Mary was just in this ranking and James Madison was just in that ranking. Where do you guys rank?' To be honest, we decided we just had to keep up with the Joneses," he said.

So when U.S. News & World Report releases its rankings Friday, Tech will probably send out a press release and log the information on its Web site like so many other colleges. It will be accessible there for the next year, though not on the front page and minus the flashy magazine cover.

Here are a few examples of how other schools use college guides as marketing tools.

• If you peruse the Washington and Lee University Web site you'll find blurbs along the margins of most pages about what publications like Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine and "The Hidden Ivies" have to say about the school.

  But you won't find a single reference to The Princeton Review, despite the publication's popularity and W&L's place on top-20 lists for things such as professor quality and campus beauty, or its ranking in beer and hard liquor consumption.

  W&L spokesman Tim Kolly said the Princeton Review shouldn't be taken seriously because it bases its rankings on random, unscientific polling of students who don't have the perspective to compare their schools to others.

  "I don't think the Princeton Review tries to make sure they get it right, they just try to make $21 a copy," Kolly said.

• The importance Radford University puts on the U.S. News & World Report rankings is immediately evident on its Web site.

  Visitors see a red copy of the magazine front and center on the first page. Clicking on it won't take them to the rankings, but rather to a package of statistics and quotes put together by Radford's office of university relations.

  Another page on the site mentions Radford's place as a "Top-25 Public Master's University in the South" and No. 49 ranking among Southern master's universities.

  There are 130 such master's degree schools in the South, which puts Radford and its No. 49 ranking in only the top 38 percent of schools in that category. Seven other master's universities in Virginia are ranked ahead of Radford.

• The same red magazine adorns the front page of the Virginia Military Institute's Web site. Clicking on that will bring you to a VMI press release touting it as the No. 1 public liberal arts college in the country, according to the magazine.

  Of course, clicking on the actual U.S. News rankings reveals that the magazine's top 72 liberal arts colleges are all private. Only 20 of the 215 liberal arts schools in the nation are public.

  So while VMI is the top public liberal arts school in the nation, it's not the top liberal arts college in its own town.

• Roanoke College inhabits the third tier of national liberal arts colleges in the U.S. News rankings. Listed as an "up and coming" liberal arts college more than a decade ago, the school made the magazine as a "regional" liberal arts college and climbed to the top of that group only to be bumped into a more competitive category.

  While that's a sign of improvement, the cache of being an also-ran among "national" liberal arts colleges isn't the same as being among the best "regional" liberal arts schools.

  The Salem school is now listed alphabetically in a tier of schools ranked between 111 and 154. With 215 national liberal arts schools, that translates to middling at best and in the bottom third of its category at worst.

  But that doesn't stop Roanoke College from referring to U.S. News as listing the school as a "nationally notable" liberal arts college.