I'd say WashU is comparable to UCSF in terms of a name recognition pattern - pretty well known in medicine and roughly equally not well known outside of medicine. Non-med people think UCSF is some random school that got tacked onto the UC system (because they've heard of Berkeley and UCLA and UCSD but never UCSF), just as people confuse WashU with UW or, occasionally, GWU. The reason, I think, for this is a relative disparity between the reputation between the medical school and the undergraduate.
As a side note, the name thing is really an unfortunate accident of history. The institution was originally named after its founder William Greenleaf Eliot, aka TS Eliot's grandfather. Eliot, being a humble guy, didn't feel comfortable with having it named after himself. The institution was re-named in George Washington's honor as a symbol of unity in the run up to the civil war and Missouri's place as a border state. Washington Territory was newly established during this period, so the State of Washington and certainly the University of Washington came much after Washington University.
I speculate that if this place were called Eliot University, it would have just as good name recognition today outside of medicine as Hopkins, another place where the reputation in medicine relatively outpaces the reputation of the college.
Rest assured though that WashU's reputation within medicine has been steady as a top 10 institution for many decades (at least since the '70s, the oldest national reputation surveys I can find), well before the undergraduate campus gained any significant national reputation. (The chancellor responsible for the latter, Bill Danforth, was previously in charge of the med school and did his residency at Barnes.) If you put any weight on USNWR rankings despite the arbitrariness of their criteria and how often they change, WashU was ranked the #2 medical school in 2003 and 2004, and is consistently #1 in student selectivity. WashU is
- where Nobelists Sutherland, Nathans, Krebs got their MDs;
- where Nobelists Sutherland, Krebs, and Kobilka (who won this year's prize in chemistry) did their medical residencies;
- where Nobelists Erlanger, the Coris, A. Kornberg, Cohen, and Levi-Montalcini did their award-winning research as faculty;
- where the Washington Manuals originate;
- where PET scans were developed;
- where a third of the human genome was decoded and current genetics research is cutting edge (see recent NYTimes articles here and here);
Some notes on size: WashU has the biggest MSTP program in the country. Barnes Jewish Hospital is clinically bigger than MGH, Hopkins, BWH, UCSF, i.e. in terms of beds and annual admissions.
An unsolicited side note on interpreting match lists that I was not aware of when I was applying: Taking extra time to do research helps you in residency applications a little, but sacrificing that time is not a choice everyone wants to make for a possible boost. At some schools but not others, it's more in the culture to take five or more years, even if you don't get an extra degree. Probably 90% of the non-MSTP students at WashU graduate in four years, even though there is more than enough funding for people who want to take research years. I won't believe you if you tell me that the students at WashU are not interested in academics and that's why they don't take a research year like half of HMS students do.
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The $110k was from the unit loan at HMS ($26,950), which was what I thought of when you mentioned research grants, as the HST program offers some research funding for its students during the academic year. A lot of schools, like WashU, have some funding for the summer.
