Are Harvard and Yale REALLY actually better?

Graduate School Law School
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<p>This might have been mentioned in other posts, but I feel the need to reiterate. The gap between Yale Law School and Harvard Law School is absolutely enormous. The gap between Harvard Law School and NYU Law School, and UChicago's Law school is not as pronounced.</p>

<p>Why is Yale consistently ranked at the top? It's just that much better. H and Y both benefit from having the best professors by far, who teach what they love to teach. I've heard of several myths about HLS that they won't teach you how to form and create arguments becasue the prof's just aren't interested in that. The job opportunities at Harvard and Yale, as well as Stanford, as just absolutely ridiculous. For the most part, recruiters find that HLS, YLS, and SLS students are > than most other law school students. Of course, there are those exceptional superstars at other law schools, but H and Y grads typically get whatever job they want. If you're looking to graduate and go into academia, SCOTUS, and other clerkships, H and Y are also a step above most other law schools. </p>

<p>I think that these factors definetly factor into the rankings. </p>

<p>Lastly, one thing that most people do now know about is the "awesomeness'" of Yale Law School. They operate on a Honors/Pass/Fail system that doesn't rank, so basically, if you're accepted, you can just mess around for three years and get just about any job, provided that you're not socially inept.</p>

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<p>For prestige and potential opportunities, I would say yes. </p>

<p>One young man who was accepted into NYU and Northwestern this year considered foregoing law school for one year to reapply to Harvard because he was not accepted into that institution, though, as mtrizzle06 said, the qualitative difference between Harvard and NYU law programs is negligible. He eventually decided to attend the University of Chicago.</p>

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Considered by whom? People who don't know anything about law school? I hear Princeton Law is also really well-regarded.

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<p>Don't make laugh! :p</p>

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<p>Sorry if I've confused anybody... What I meant to say is that there is a decided gap between Harvard and the rest of the T6, but it isn't as large as H and Y or S. Yale is just a step above the rest. Of course, if you go to HLS, goof around for for years and end up near the median, expect recruiters from BIGLAW firms to be catering to your every need. That simply is not the case at NYULS, CLS, or even Chicago, unless you are in the top quarter of your class</p>

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<p>mtrizzle06, I could be wrong, but I believe that difference between Harvard and the rest of the top six, except for Yale and Stanford, is based on sheer reputation.</p>

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<p>to those who know, the Yale J.D. is probably the single most prestigious degree in the world. it can be argued that Harvard is best everything, except law, where it is a firm #2 behind Yale.</p>

<p>many argue rankings don't mean much, but U.S. News and World Report began ranking law schools in 1987. (taking a line from Wiki) Yale Law School has been rated the #1 best law school in the United States in every year in which the magazine has ranked law schools, except for the first year 1987, when it tied for first with Harvard. </p>

<p>rankings don't mean much, but Yale has never ever been considered #2 by USNW.</p>

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<p>read what Wiki has to say. </p>

<p>harvard
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Law_School%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Law_School&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>yale
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_Law_School%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_Law_School&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>u'll conclude both are indeed excellent. but u'd have to give the edge to the description of yale. it wouldn't seem harvard has the "stuff" that would put it ahead of yale.</p>

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<p>a jucicial clerkship is apparently the most prestigious thing u can do right out of graduation from law school. straight raw numbers, harvard sends more graduates onto JCs than Yale. but the numbers (taken from a sample year) were 50:38. the next highest was chicago at like 12, the next had like 6 (most law schools never send anyone, most top-tiers average 1, IF that).</p>

<p>harvard law graduates like 3X as many people as Yale. so considering the ratio, Yale grads are far more in demand. its even said that Yalies turn down JCs cause its such a common route that everyone takes, and they want to do something different.</p>

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<p>I don't think anyone has really argued that Harvard outranks Yale. As far as I can tell, the only blight on Yale's reputation is Clarence Thomas. Did I just say that??</p>

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<p>When people say Yale law school is better than Harvard they mean that Yale Law School has better/smarter/more accomplished students. Seems about right. Employers realize this.</p>

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<p>
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When people say Yale law school is better than Harvard they mean that Yale Law School has better/smarter/more accomplished students. Seems about right. Employers realize this.

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<p>At the level we're talking about, I honestly don't think you can say that Yale really has smarter students than Harvard -- combined you are talking about only the top couple of hundred law school admittees in the country. By shear virtue of their relative sizes, Yale will accept and admit fewer students than Harvard -- but I really don't think you can say its because those who end up at Harvard ended up on the short end of the stick for "smart and bright." (and I say this as a YLS grad).</p>

<p>I was there quite a number of years ago -- I will say that my class consisted of quite an eclectic group ranging in ages and backgrounds. I was the "typical" straight from college poli sci major and I assumed I'd find law school full of people like me -- part of my adjustment to law school was adjusting to the fact that there simply was no such thing as a typical YLS student. That mix in the student body definitely affected the atmosphere, the dialogue among students, the discussion in classes -- what I got from law school was definitely influenced by the fact that I was NOT surrounded by other people who had been typical pre-law students prior to arriving. I would have been just as smart if I'd chosen Harvard instead (there are people who do choose it over Yale) -- but, at least based on my visits to Harvard Law School and talks with HLS grads, my experience would have been vastly different.</p>

<p>The stuff that goes on in the YLS classroom is, I really do think, very different than that at many other law schools -- I clearly can't compare all, but I've spoken to friends and I sat in on other schools' classes when I was applying. Black letter law had very little place at YLS. (There were some profs who dealt more with the actual state of the law, I just seemed to miss the few that did.) They took this eclectic group and encouraged them to look well beyond what "was." </p>

<p>The grading system and the fact that Journal was not competitive (you just had to get write an article and get it approved to be "on journal") definitely made for an atmosphere where people generally didn't view each other as the competition.</p>

<p>Does that curriculum itself make YLS students better law clerks or better associates? I don't think so in terms of a technical learned ability to be a lawyer -- in fact we're known for driving supervising attorneys crazy ("I don't care what the public policy considerations are -- just tell me what the regulations permit!"). I also don't think its just a matter of us having gotten identified as smart by virtue of having been admitted to YLS. I think some of the appeal of YLS grads is also that they've spend 3 years being free to intellectualize with other really smart people about the law (both our fellow students and our professors) -- being willing to see the bigger picture. However, I also think it may be why many YLS grads end up not being satisfied with law firm life.</p>

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<p>
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At the level we're talking about, I honestly don't think you can say that Yale really has smarter students than Harvard -- combined you are talking about only the top couple of hundred law school admittees in the country. By shear virtue of their relative sizes, Yale will accept and admit fewer students than Harvard -- but I really don't think you can say its because those who end up at Harvard ended up on the short end of the stick for "smart and bright." (and I say this as a YLS grad).

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People can get into Harvard (and every other school) based solely on having a 180 & 4.0. You can't count on that at Yale.</p>

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<p>^show me an example of someone with those stats not getting into Yale.</p>

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<p><a href="http://lawschoolnumbers.com/display.php?user=letylyf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://lawschoolnumbers.com/display.php?user=letylyf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Quite interesting actually. This person was rejected from Stanford - not Yale. But then again, Stanford is also relatively holistic (as is Yale). If a 180/4.0 got rejected from Stanford it could easily happen at Yale. Looking at Law Schools Numbers seems to imply the real cutoff for Yale is 177/3.85 ~ meaning that if one has above that there is an extremely high probability of acceptance.</p>

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<p>
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People can get into Harvard (and every other school) based solely on having a 180 & 4.0. You can't count on that at Yale.

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<p>assuming this is true (i have no personal knowledge as to whether either part of this assertion is true) i still don't think that says anything about how "smart" the relative classes at harvard and yale are -- i think it goes more to what i said about yale putting together quite an interesting mix of people.</p>

<p>there are also an awful lot of really really smart people at the next several law schools. employers know that too. the relatively small number of yls grads certainly helps in terms of their desirability -- ie if a firm wants to boast that it hires from yls, hls, columbia, and upenn, an individual yls student has a greater shot simply because there are fewer of them - not necessarily because they are per se smarter. </p>

<p>there were times, especially first year when the hiring structure was less rigid (at least that was the case back when i was in school, i don't know how things are now), when a firm would recruit and clearly have a "yale first year summer slot" to fill -- if the person who they first offered the job to turned them down, they immediately offered it to another yale first year -- it was also their way of seeding recruitment for second years (not just with that one person, but presumably with all the classmates he/she would tell about his/her fabulous summer). was it because the firm thought that each of those yale first year's on its list were smarter than the first years at another school? or was it because they wanted to be able to say they had someone from yale?</p>

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<p>Great thread.</p>

<p>Appropos of a post on page 1, I attended a third-tier law Eastern school with a first-tier curriculum (this means that there are only a handful of required courses; at many third- and fourth-tier schools they mandate most classes and are, essentially, teaching you the bar). I took nothing specific to my jurisdiction and nothing "practical." With the exception of two evidence courses taught by Federal judges, I avoided adjunct faculty.</p>

<p>The differences between my school and the top-5 local school could be summed up as differences in degree, not type. The top school's courses moved a bit faster (though the same text was covered) and I had two lousy teacher who would never have been allowed to teach at a top school. Having said that, I also had four outstanding profs who could teach anywhere. I doubled up on courses with these, and emerged just fine.</p>

<p>My degree was/is worth one-third of a top-10 degree. Had I been accepted at a top school, I would have moved heaven and earth to attend. Law school reputation matters because it matters. It opens doors (or closes them, in my case).</p>

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<p>Mr. Payne - what an interesting site that is - I glanced over the stats for my law school and LSAT sure seemed to rule until the GPA dipped below a certain number and then, even with a great LSAT, waitlist or rejection. If these numbers are correct, Yale admissions are eclectic to say the least. There is one candidate accepted at Yale who was rejected at Northwestern, BC and Univ of MD - a legacy perhaps? Legacy must carry some weight at Yale, right? There was a person with a 157 who got in to Harvard and Yale - now I'm wondering if these numbers are accurate.</p>

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<p>It's user submitted, so I always tend to doubt "wierd" cases. Generally you can tell which users seem legit and which ones don't (I think 99% are legit users). The data is very powerful.</p>

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<p>"Law school reputation matters because it matters."</p>

<p>I agree with this. I don't think many employers, be they firms, agencies, or federal judges, prefer H/Y grads because they think the teaching is better at H/Y. </p>

<p>The academic job market is so competitive that there are many outstanding teachers (and outstanding scholars, for the matter) teaching at third and fourth tier schools, especially in big cities. The profs are usually less famous at those schools, but if they offer a lesser education in any sense, I think it's primarily because of the students, not the professors. I just mean that the smarter and better-prepared your classmates are, the more stimulating it will probably be to listen to their Socratic dialogue for four hours a day. The single most educational aspect of my HLS experience was the opportunity to spend 3 years inside the constant debates that occurred among 500+ sharp, well-informed students who disagreed with each other with tons of energy and skill. A lot of them are now T3 and T4 professors, and I bet they are darn good at it.</p>

<p>No, employers seek top-6 grads because (1) reputation matters because it matters, and (2) they think that the kids who go to top-6 schools are likely to be smart and hardworking irrespective of what they did or didn't learn in law school.</p>

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This isn't really what's going on. You don't get jobs from your classmates

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<p>As said above, not immediately upon graduation. But later in your career, it can definitely help a lot. </p>

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It's not really about access to employers, either, because nothing stops non-YLS students from contacting them and OCI is more for everyone's convenience than anything else. Even if YLS decided to scrap its OCI program and its students were forced to mass-mail employers, they would still benefit from having the school on their resume.

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<p>Sure, they would benefit from the name anyway, but OCI also helps. After all, think of it this way. Why do the top recruiters show up to YLS (and HLS and the other top law schools), but not to the low-tier ones? These recruiters could obviously choose to show up to any law schools they want, so why do they tend to show up only at the top ones? It's 2-sided network effects. Better students attracts better recruiters which attracts still better students, and so forth. </p>

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But that's not quite what's going on with Yale Law School. It's more of a Veblen effect than a network effect.

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<p>Well, I wouldn't quite call it a Veblen effect, as a law degree isn't really so much of a 'consumer good', as few people get a law degree just because they think it's cool to have a Yale law degree (I'm sure some people do, but considering the expense, I think they're safely in the minority). Let's face it - the vast majority of people who get a Yale law degree (or a Harvard law degree or whatever) do so because they intend to use it to get the law career that they want. If these people could somehow magically get the career that they want without having to put up with the time and expense of Yale or Harvard or whatever, they would do that instead. </p>

<p>Hence, for most people, an elite degree is really only a means to an ends, and hence, such degrees should be judged on how well they help people accomplish those ends. That's why I invoke the notion of network effects. A better reputation for better students attracts better employers, which attracts still better students, and so forth.</p>