<p>@lizmane, I can’t prove it, but your explanation for why AU ranks lower than it should makes perfect sense to me. I imagine AU’s faculty has, on balance, more real world experience and perhaps less impressive academic credentials than do those academicians whose opinions drive the reputation rankings. As for Wake, it is almost certainly more conservative and more affluent today than it was when I went there, but I am confident that the intolerance you referenced is either extremely rare or, more likely, the product of an overactive imagination or sour grapes. As at most schools its size, WFU has people of widely disparate ethnic, political, religious, and socioeconomic backrounds, and it continues to work hard on diversity.</p>