The institution is respected in medicine, too, says Diana E. Post '67, a physician and second vice president of the Radcliffe College Alumnae Association (RCAA).

But business is another story.

"In the last few years I started to say Radcliffe College/Harvard University in places like my corporate bio, but what's tended to happen is that it causes more confusion than it answers," says Janet C. Corcoran '79, a regional director for RCAA who works on Wall Street. "It's just easier to say Harvard and leave it at that."

RCAA President A'Lelia P. Bundles '74 agrees that the Radcliffe pedigree doesn't extend as far in the corporate world.

"Everybody knows the Harvard name, and only some people know the Radcliffe name," says Bundles, a journalist and author in Washington. "But the people who know the Radcliffe name truly respect it and know its value."

Geography also plays a role. In New England, home to many of the nation's most famous women's colleges, Radcliffe is familiar to most professionals, alums say.

Even many Northeasterners who did not attend Harvard or Radcliffe know someone who did, Corcoran says.

"I find it's value-added when I'm interacting with other professional women [in New York] because Radcliffe will have been an institution a classmate went to, or a friend or a sibling," Corcoran says.