The funny thing is, at least when I attended UW (early 2000's), is that its domestic profile was not as strong as its recognition in the US would suggest. Many Canadians would mention more established schools such as U of T and Queens before Waterloo.
However, when I went for my first internship in California (NVIDIA, with about 20 fellow UW students), I found out that most people there couldn't name a single Canadian school, but if they could, it was UW.
I also remember a poker dealer in Vegas seeing my friend's iron ring and guessing "Waterloo?".
My experience (late 2007-2012) echoed yours. I'd meet people from Western Canada who hadn't heard of Waterloo, but anyone who'd been in the valley for a while would have a story about someone they'd worked with from Waterloo or how much they like hiring newgrads.
Funny... it was the place for math and CS (in both the math and engineering schools) in the '70s. Hell, you'd have to have been blind to miss the Waterloo-sponsored math contests in high school (only the Society of Actuaries sponsored any other HS contests in those days, and that one was only for Grade 13 students in Ontario). If you did math or wanted to get into the computer world, you wanted to go to Waterloo, the same way that engineers wanted to go to Queens. I find it rather hard to believe that UW fell off of the map in the intervening period.
Depends on the field. You talk to geeks, they list Waterloo and UofT. You talk to scientists, they list McMaster and UofT. You talk to teachers, they list Brock and UofT. And so on.
However, when I went for my first internship in California (NVIDIA, with about 20 fellow UW students), I found out that most people there couldn't name a single Canadian school, but if they could, it was UW.
I also remember a poker dealer in Vegas seeing my friend's iron ring and guessing "Waterloo?".