Amid rising doctoral populations and growing diversification inpost-PhD careers beyond academia, the disproportionate increase inemployment opportunities for doctorate holders has created height-ened pressures on doctoral graduates to improve their relative employ-ability. This is particularly pronounced in high-participation highereducation systems such as China, where post-graduation competitionis complicated by the reputational status of institutions attended.Drawing on interviews with Chinese Social Science and Humanitiesdoctoral graduates associated with distinct institutional affiliations ofC9 and non-C9 League universities, this paper explores the mediatingrole of institutional reputation in graduates’ negotiations of labor marketpositionings. Building on the concept of institutional habitus, the anal-ysis illustrates how institutional reputation is constructed and internal-ized such that it operates as both a structural and emotional mediator,shaping the ways graduates position themselves within the labormarket queue and their strategic responses to positional competition.