The interesting thing is how regional reputation/rankings is even for so-called national schools. My assumption is that for people in certain areas of New England and the Mid-Atlantic, the difference between the various NESCAC schools + other small LACs in the area is really meaningful to them. By contrast, in LA, I think there are a lot of highly-educated people who, if they have even heard of all of the NESCAC schools, would kind of view all but a couple of them as completely interchangeable and would probably confuse them with Bennington, for instance. That's not to say LA folks aren't prestige focused, but for a variety of reasons (distance, weather, strong state school options nearby), liberal arts colleges aren't as widely chosen, percentage-wise. Moreover, when they do leave SoCal for an LAC, they are widely-dispersed in their destination. That means that most people don't know enough kids who have even considered the Maine schools, let alone gone there, for instance, to have established a pecking order in their minds. It's kind of freeing in a way.
I agree. There is a huge provincialism about all of these schools. While the NESCACs, at least most of them, are well known nationally, when you travel around to different areas they aren't put on a pedestal the same way they often are in the Northeast. I grew up in NJ, and I certainly knew most of the NESCACs. I never heard of Washington and Lee until I opened the big book of colleges we all used in the 90s. No one from my public NJ h.s. had ever applied to Washington and Lee. As someone ranked fairly highly in my class, my teachers, guidance counselors, etc., were shocked I was going to a school they had never heard of. They kept thinking I was going to Washington University, or Washington College, or Mary Washington, or George Washington.
When I graduated and moved back to NJ and then Manhattan for work, W&L was still pretty unknown in most circles. There was no real boost for it, like there was for Amherst or other NESCACs. However, as soon as I started making connections in my industry, and found some companies headquartered in the south, I was in a lot more demand. W&L carried a whole different reputation with companies in Georgia, TN, FL, NC, AL, etc. As I moved to one of those companies, and eventually sat on some hiring boards, it became obvious that W&L grads were preferred. Amherst, Grinnell, Tufts, etc.... nowhere near the same cache they held in the Northeast.
So yeah, "National Liberal Arts School" is correct, but if you want that recognition boost, think about where you want to be after college as well. I don't think W&L is going to play any better in Oregon than it did in NYC. But I don't think the C-M-S names are going to play as well in GA as they will in California. Amherst probably plays well nationally, but not as well as it does in NYC and Boston, let alone a school like Hamilton or Trinity (CT). All are great schools, but how well they play after graduation is very much still a matter of location, or maybe an alumni in a key position or two.
