So many had not! Those who did recognize it were older or had kids also applying to LACs.
Circling back, my youngest was admitted to South Carolina, and we just finished tours of the main campus and engineering school. She really loved it. She didn’t feel she had the stats to apply for the Honors program, but it sounds like an amazing opportunity for those who do.
Confirming this. I went to Wesleyan and always had to explain where it was, what it was, and what is was not — as in “no, not the women’s college in Massachusetts” (Wellesley). Actually kind of still do, even with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s cred.
Well as I loved Gossip Girl and Gilmore Girls that is probably how I because an expert 
OK, adding this to the game design–real college, fake college, or never-President-Vice-President? Greendale, Barden, Hudson, Faber, Harrison (getting tricky), Coolidge (WAS President), Adams (SAME, we got you again) . . . .
Lisa Simpson often mentions wanting to go to Vassar.
The same with Swarthmore. Almost no one in the Midwest knows of it except in DH’s business circles. Then again there are a lot of blank stares for Williams and Amherst.
Ok, that could be it too.
On another note I watch entirely too much tv.
Swarthmore and Amherst I had heard of. Williams I really hadn’t until coming to CC.
The NESCAC schools are well-represented in our family. Everyone that went to Bowdoin bemoans the crazy pronunciation of that name. And someone else was asked if Tufts was toothpaste! (No, that’s Colgate!)
We have a little of that going on here. The one place that sparkled for D24, wasn’t worth it for us with zero merit (and I wasn’t digging the alternate entry path), so it had to come off the list. “likes the school but too close to home” is now one of the top contenders.
I want her to get to the place of excited, instead of “yeah, this could work”, or “I guess I probably should”.
I hate this SOOOOOOO bad right now. One of her scholarships has an April 1 commitment requirement, and the way things are going with FAFSA I really question whether one of the other schools will have any kind of number to us by then, because they haven’t even closed their scholarship application portal yet because they are extending deadlines on everything, except housing. 
Will slow school just get bumped? Will scholarship school get bumped? Who knows!
We live near Wesleyan and have to do the opposite with older daughter going to Wellesley!
Speaking of blank stares, when I would tell people that I went to Haverford, I got a lot of them (and this was on the East Coast). Sometimes telling them that it used to be the brother school to Bryn Mawr helped, and I even got a few, “Oh, you went to Harvard?!” Woe was me 
University of Toronto has started sending out acceptances to St George Campus. My daughter got into UofT/Trinity College/Humanities today and her friend got into UofT/Trinity College/Life Sciences today as well.
We live in the northeast and I’d still say 35-40% of the time when someone asks where my D attends and I say vassar they either look at me blankly or ask “where is that again?”
One son went to Grinnell, he either got blank stares or Wow you go to Cornell. Fast forward, his little brother is at Bowdoin, older brother keeps referring to it as Beloit.
At my son’s high school award night, the guidance counselor (large public high school) would announce the colleges that different students would be attending, and when it came to my son, he stared at the paper a bit before announcing that X would be attending “Vase-are” – definitely a LOT of people haven’t heard of Vassar. People on CC are a distinct minority 
Looks like there are a whole lot of Vassar references in TV shows and movies looking at this list. One of them being a not so kind reference from House of Cards.
Way back when I told people I was going to Lafayette they would say “oh in Indiana”……
My older son goes to a selective LAC in the northeast and most people in my family (Asian) and many from my town had never heard of it. We live in MA. They would politely nod their head and ask if they teach Arts there, and say that it’s great that my son is trying out something unique. Another one asked if they teach liberal politics there.