"When I first came down I was a real rarity, if not to say an oddity," she says

But even 20 years later, Kartoz-Doochin, now president of the Harvard Club of Middle Tennessee, says she is still surprised at the way some people in her region perceive a Harvard education.

While high schools seniors in New York City or Boston apply in droves to the College, convincing bright students from Tennessee to go to Harvard is more challenging because of the strong ties some feel to their parents' alma maters.

"People want to go where their daddy went," she says--schools like Vanderbilt or the University of Alabama.

That means the Harvard network is smaller and less powerful when it comes to helping Harvard grads land jobs in parts of the South and Southwest.

The fact that the University of Texas and Texas A & M are public schools regarded as educational powerhouses discourages many Texas students from looking out of state for their college education, according to James F. Hughes III '79, president of the Harvard Club of Houston.

And while the Harvard name can be helpful when finding work, Hughes says there is some disadvantage to graduating from a school in Cambridge--and not in the region.

"We don't have the same infrastructure and network [as the Texas universities]" he says. "It's growing, but we don't have that."