"It has the kind of cachet that you have when you say you went to Harvard," she says.

One important reason for its graduates' success is the multiple chances to network. Associate Director Jeremy A. M. Evans says students are able to talk to one another and to professionals at meals, question-and-answer sessions, breaks and the course's "sherry hour."

"More and more, the industry is dependent on the course," Hess says. "We know everybody in the industry."

Because of the course's precise focus, it has managed to achieve significant name recognition--a lesson that the rest of Radcliffe can regain now that its confusing ties with Harvard and undergraduates are clarified, alumnae say.

"The history, the affiliation with women and women's issues for over a hundred years, the national recognition of places like the Schlesinger Library and the Bunting Institute...are all things Radcliffe can build on," Stein says.

And if the new Institute focuses on women and gender, the Radcliffe name may prove more valuable even than its big brother's, Goodman says.

"For issues relating to women and women's place in society, it's a better name than Harvard," she says. "In that community, wouldn't you rather have the Radcliffe name?"