In most of broadband wireless data access systems including the cdma2000 1xEV-DO system, a maximum possible data rate prescribed by the channel condition of a terminal is reflected into the priority metric in the course of packet scheduling. Particular examples of packet scheduling algorithms include the proportional fairness and modified largest weighted delay first (M-LWDF) packet scheduling schemes. We note that all of these existing algorithms suffer from a so-called rate-length mismatch problem, which may seriously degrade the system performance. In this paper, we devise a new priority metric based on a concept of virtual DRC (Data Rate Control) to solve this particular problem. It has been shown that our virtual DRC-based packet scheduling algorithm always works better than or at least equivalently to the conventional one.