I note I think part of what happens with WashU’s “brand” generally is it is sort of a jack of all trades/well-rounded type of college, not a very “spikey” type of college, maybe outside of pre-med and some Bio stuff. Nor is it a big sports college, including not being in the Ivy League or NESCAC (although it is in the UAA, but that is mostly just a thing people know about if they are already associated with one of those colleges).
OK, so it just doesn’t tend to come up much in any sort of focused conversation, usually just in general “good colleges” conversations, with the possible exception of pre-med/Bio conversations.
And actually, I suspect that happens post-graduation as well. Like, not to be undiplomatic, but usually I know if colleagues or such went to Notre Dame for college because it usually comes up in conversation, they may still have merch of some sort, or so on. This was a joke, but Andy on The Office being super into having attended Cornell does, in my experience, reflect a bit of truth about those colleges as well. Whereas I am not sure alums of WashU are going to be quite so obvious to others.
But as far as I can tell, none of this is a big barrier to employers, grad or professional schools, or so on thinking of WashU as in fact a good college with graduates in which they might be interested. Like, if they are in a position where it matters, they will know it is selective, they will know a lot of the kids were academic high-flyers in HS, they will know the classes are challenging, they will know it is not considered overly grade-inflated, and so on. Which is a positive brand, even if it is not the sort of spikey brand that gets talked a lot about in casual conversations.
Then in terms of alum networks–I always think this is a more complex issue than some people suggest because in any sort of networking situation you have to look at both the supply AND demand side.
So if College A sends a lot of graduates to some labor market, on the one hand that may mean a lot of well-placed alums, but on the other they may also see a lot of recent grads looking for positions. And in fact, if they see too many, they may basically do nothing for any of them absent some more personal connection (like this is my old roommate’s kid or something like that). So this sort of market condition may benefit a few kids but not be particularly helpful for most others.
Of course if College B has previously sent extremely few grads to some labor market, that may also not be very helpful because there may be few or no well-placed alums for a given interest.
But exactly how many grads would be ideal, or if it even matters past a certain point, is not so obvious.