Harvard as the “most powerful and influential” and sakky’s comments

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>Sakky sent me a lengthy private email as a follow-up to a post in which we debated my claim that Harvard has “easily most powerful and influential professional schools” in the U.S. I guess this was almost a month ago but I haven’t been to this website for a while so let me address some of his points now – especially regarding HLS.</p>

<p>“While I have never disputed the strength of HMS and HBS, what I “don’t understand” is why is it that, apparently, YLS has been ranked higher than HLS in every single USNews ranking. Furthermore, YLS beats HLS in cross-yields. Furthermore, YLS admits a class with higher LSAT scores and GPA than HLS does. Furthermore, on a per-capita basis, YLS probably has more prominent alumni base than HLS does. Can you explain all of this?”</p>

<li>Sakky puts way too much faith in US News rankings, which are deeply flawed. His reasoning is that YLS is ranked higher and higher yield and therefore it must be a better school. It’s informative to consider the following:</li>
</ol>

<p>Pre-1990s (before U.S. News rankings started):
HLS yield ~70%
YLS yield ~50%</p>

<p>Since mid-1990s (soon after U.S. News started to rank YLS first)
HLS yield ~68%
YLS yield ~ 77%</p>

<p>Here’s an article by a Yale Law professor Henry Hansmann that sheds some light:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp9901.pdf[/url]”>http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp9901.pdf</a></p>

<p>“for many years, the Yale Law School’s take-up rate - that is, the percentage of students who choose to attend Yale among those to whom Yale offers admission - remained fairly contant at around 50 percent. Then, in the early 1990s, the take-up rate rose rapidly to around 80 percent, where it has remained… Why did Yale suddenly emerge as everyone’s top choice among law schools? … I suspect that a particular important factor was the advent of U.S. News and World Report’s nationwide rankings of law schools…In rankings published in 1992 and annually since then, Yale has held steady at number 1, while Harvard rebounded to the number 2 spot and has likewise remained there. Not surprisingly, the big jumps in Yale’s take-up rate came with the classes entering in 1992 and 1993…”</p>

<p>So it’s people like Sakky who blindly believe rankings that have driven up YLS’s yield, which in turn perpetuates the rankings. </p>

<li>The LSAT and GPA difference between YLS and HLS is miniscule. According to the US News, the 25%-75% LSAT scores were 169-175 for HLS and 170-176 for YLS.
25-75% GPAs were 3.72-3.95 for HLS and 3.83-3.97 for YLS.<br></li>
</ol>

<p>If you lined up the students and looked at the student right in the middle of the class (student #108 at YLS and #280 at HLS), yes, the #108 will have a very slightly higher GPA and LSATs. But it’s a mistake to just look at the median, and not the curve itself. When you plot out the Gaussian distribution of HLS and YLS, YLS student curve will completely disappear into the HLS curve, meaning that HLS contains all of the talent in YLS plus a heck of a lot more. It has a far deeper and larger talent pool. When you count from the top, the #108 at HLS will have significantly higher grades and scores than #108 at YLS. Using the U.S. News data, #108 at HLS will be in the top 20% of his/her HLS class and will have higher than 3.95 GPA and 175 LSATs (which corresponds to top 25%).</p>

<h1>108 at YLS, on the other hand, will have 3.9 GPA and 173 LSATs.</h1>

<p>Let’s consider other aspects:</p>

<h1>total J.D. candidates- HLS 1680, YLS 650</h1>

<h1>applications – HLS 6810, YLS 3667</h1>

<p>full-time faculty (excluding non-tenure track) - HLS 84, YLS 52
visiting faculty – HLS 150, YLS 56</p>

<h1>courses offered – HLS 250, YLS 185</h1>

<h1>volumes in library – HLS 2 million, YLS 800,000</h1>

<p>It becomes very clear that HLS has significantly more academic resources than YLS in aggregate and has a much greater talent pool than YLS, which translates into far greater influence in the legal world. </p>

<li>YLS does NOT have a more prominent alumni base than HLS. See for yourself.
<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Harvard_Law_School_graduates[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Harvard_Law_School_graduates</a>
<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yale_Law_School_alumni[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yale_Law_School_alumni</a></li>
</ol>

<p>HLS – 1 U.S. President, 9 U.S. Attorney Generals, 17 Supreme Court justices and additional 4 who did not graduate (6 of 9 current Supreme Court justices attended HLS), 18 cabinet members, numerous governors (including current governors of Massachusetts and New York), senators (9 current), heads of state, and current deans of Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley law schools.</p>

<p>YLS- 2 U.S. Presidents, 1 U.S. Attorney General, 3 cabinet members, 9 Supreme Court justices (2 currently sitting), 3 current senators, etc.</p>

<p>HLS outnumbers YLS 3.2 times at the most prestigious law firms in the country while its student body is 2.6 times as large as YLS:
<a href=“http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2...national.shtml[/url]”>http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2...national.shtml</a>
placement in top 3 law firms in each city:
Atlanta- Harvard 74, Yale 17
Boston- Harvard 290, Yale 30
Chicago- Harvard 167, Tale 41
Dallas- Harvard 10, Yale 1
D.C. – Harvard 192, Yale 93
Houston –Harvard 67, Yale 18
LA – Harvard 169, Yale 65
Minneapolis – Harvard 27, Yale 5
New York- Harvard 185, Yale 70
Philadelphia –Harvard 45, Yale 8
San Francisco – Harvard 91, Yale 37
St. Louis – Harvard 13, Yale 3
Total major cities – Harvard 1475, Yale 454</p>

<p>Hiring by the most selective law firms in the country:
Cravath, Swaine, and Moore (NYC) – Harvard 110, Yale 24
Kellog, Huber, Hansen, Todd, and Evans (D.C.)- Harvard 13, Yale 2
Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (D.C.)- Harvard 54, Yale 27
O’Melveny & Myers(LA) – Harvard 32, Yale 14 </p>

<p>HLS students also get more Supreme Court clerkships than YLS:
<a href=“http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2...s_clerks.shtml[/url]”>http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2...s_clerks.shtml</a>
Harvard –74 Supreme Court clerks, Yale – 54 clerks in 2000-2005</p>

<p>HLS blows away Yale in total number of publications in legal journals:
Most downloaded law faculties:
<a href=“http://www.leiterrankings.com/facult...ownloads.shtml[/url]”>http://www.leiterrankings.com/facult...ownloads.shtml</a>
Harvard – 50,800 downloads in 2006
Yale –24,800 downloads in 2006</p>

<p>If you consider all of the above, I think most reasonable people would agree that HLS is easily the most powerful and influential law school in the country. Yes, YLS is a significant presence and is an extremely high-quality law school, perhaps a little higher than HLS if you strictly considered the normalized values only, but overall HLS is the dominant law school in the land. Just as France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands are all important economic powers and their citizens may even enjoy a higher quality of life in some aspects than the U.S., but in the end, the U.S. is the only economic superpower.</p>

2

<p>Let me add a sentence about HMS, which is by far the most influential medical school in the land. According to Dean Martin's email that I just got, HMS has 2031 alumni as professors at U.S. medical schools other than Harvard, 78 of whom are chairs of their departments. Considering that the annual class size of HMS is about 180, this is quite amazing.</p>

<p>HMS faculty also gets several times the amount of NIH grants and other external grants as their nearest competitors.</p>

<p>HMS Ph.D. program in medical sciences has a yield that is twice those of the closest competitors, ie. MIT, Stanford, UCSF, and UC Berkeley.</p>

3

<p>Also note that someone at the 75% at YLS (#170 counting from the top) will have 3.83 GPA and 170 LSATs. </p>

<h1>170 at HLS will be at the 30% and will have a 3.9 GPA and 173 LSATs.</h1>

<p>ie. HLS is YLS and then some.</p>

4

<p>Correct me if I'm mistaken...didn't that WSJ feeder guide say something along the lines of Yale undergrads choose HLS over YLS?</p>

5

<p>I think humans would be much more productive if we argue over problems that actually matter...as opposed to whether Yale or Harvard is better.</p>

6

<p>I think that's a cop-out answer that doesn't add anything to this debate</p>

7

<p>No...it's not a cop-out answer. It really just doesn't matter...tell me...what does THIS DEBATE add?</p>

8

<p>lol, well i guess it matters if you're a tool.</p>

9

<p>lol well i can't get into either one of them so GREAT FOR ME!!!</p>

10

<p>Wow, someone has way too much time on his/her hands.</p>

11

<p>Well, if you don't think it's useful, don't read it and don't comment on it. No one's challenging the facts, that much is obvious.</p>

<p>Mr_sanguine, didn't you claim the other day that Yale has the #1 law school?</p>

12

<p>who cares, if i get into either one of them in four years' time, i'd be in bliss.
I've been contemplating doing a law degree in the future.</p>

<p>since we have started this thread, can I digress a bit and ask you guys what are your reasons for going to Law school?</p>

13

<p>I thought I'd give my two cents here as an entering HMS student next year. Half of what ske293 said about HMS is true, namely that HMS turns out many influential leaders of medicine. This, in fact, is their goal, and HMS tends to select people in the admissions process for their promise to shape the course of the profession rather than people who they believe will become excellent clinicians. The second claim, that HMS faculty get several times the amount of NIH money than their nearest competitors is a little bit misleading. As a group, the faculty do pull in a billion dollars of NIH funding, about double the next highest (which this year is Penn). That said, HMS is a huge institution on the faculty level. It encompasses both the medical school and three huge academic hospitals (MGH, BWH, and BIDMC) all of which are the size and tier of major teaching hospitals associated with other medical schools. The result is that the school has 11,000 faculty. So while the net impact of all these faculty is that HMS brings in a lot of research money, the amount PER faculty member is actually smaller than some schools like Stanford which keeps a small faculty base and cherry picks their professors. As a student, however, having the wealth of faculty and diversity of research interests is amazing. There's sure to be someone working on the exact obscure topic you'd like to study. Since the class size is about the same as other medical schools (166 inclusive of NP and HST programs), and the faculty is so large, a heap of opportunities are laid at the feet of the medical students. Moreover, the school is Pass/Fail the first two years so (like YLS) it tends to promote an attractive, non-competitive environment.</p>

<p>Now, as to the law school issue. My sister is at YLS so I feel I can comment. YLS is known for training a lot of law professors and supreme court justices / politicians. It is pass/fail (unlike most law schools) and thus, like HMS, is very selective with their admissions but tries to make their students equal while they are there. Moreover, it is far more theoretical than most law schools and so is not an ideal place to study law to become a practicing lawyer. HLS is the opposite. HLS is a huge place that ranks and grades each of students. The theory is that by ranking their students, the students at the very top who supposedly are the most deserving, get rewarded. HLS is known for being a corporate law powerhouse and turns out many people who go into major law firms. While HLS also turns out a fair amount of law professors, this is probably more a function of its size (and thus diversity of student interest) than its focus. Hope this clears things up.</p>

14

<p>One correction: I said that YLS is pass/fail. I realized that in fact it is only pass/fail during the first semester. The rest of the time it is Honors/Pass/Fail. The difference is greater than you might expect. I don't believe the school assigns rank.</p>

15

<p>I agree with what you said except for the following:</p>

<p>"the amount PER faculty member is actually smaller than some schools like Stanford which keeps a small faculty base and cherry picks their professors."</p>

<p>That number is not very meaningful (although the U.S. News lists that data), because HMS faculty do very different things. In fact there are 3 different ways that the faculty can be appointed and promoted, ie. basic laboratory investigation, clinical research (e.g. clinical trials), or clinical educator (gives lectures and has seminars with students). Clinical educators will rarely have NIH grants, and clinical researchers often spend only a fraction of their effort on research, e.g. less than 30%; the grant size can obviously vary depending on that. Because the majority of HMS faculty are in fact clinical faculty based at hospitals, simply dividing by the total number without considering the breakdown is meaningless. If you just considered basic investigators at the Quadrangle, for example, I think that the average grant per investigator at HMS would be comparable to or higher than other schools. </p>

<p>"HMS tends to select people in the admissions process for their promise to shape the course of the profession rather than people who they believe will become excellent clinicians."</p>

<p>HMS graduates also go into primary care, family practice, public health, Indian Health Service, the U.S. military, consulting, writing, etc. in pretty significant numbers. And there are many excellent clinicians who come out of HMS. I don't think the admissions office necessarily looks for just those who are destined for the academia. They do look for leadership and talent, obviously.</p>

16

<p>"In fact there are 3 different ways that the faculty can be appointed and promoted, ie. basic laboratory investigation, clinical research (e.g. clinical trials), or clinical educator (gives lectures and has seminars with students)."</p>

<p>This is the same at other schools as well.</p>

<p>"Because the majority of HMS faculty are in fact clinical faculty based at hospitals"</p>

<p>Again, confusion. Many of the straight basic sciences (genetics, immunology, etc.) are done on the Quad. However, most basic research done on a clinical subject (for instance, urology) is done through the hospitals. Many of the clinical faculty (and by this, you mean non-Quad faculty) have labs at the hospitals. The amount of this kind of research being done is extensive. Those that don't have labs almost always do clinical research of some sort. As with most schools, the road to tenure is paved with research, and thus clinician educators cannot be promoted to a senior faculty position unless they change tracks. I think you're confusing clinical educators with clinical faculty here. The amount of clinical educators is small by comparison. </p>

<p>"I don't think the admissions office necessarily looks for just those who are destined for the academia."</p>

<p>You're absolutely right. I never made such a claim. People can be leaders of the profession through other routes than academia. I also never made the claim that HMS turns out bad clinicians. To the contrary, HMS turns out some great docs. I just meant to say that HMS-grads tend not to be your run of the mill "great clinicians" - they become great clinicians who pioneer new therapies and operations, etc.</p>

17

<p>The comparison between YLS and HLS is kind of like the comparison between Caltech and MIT - one theoretical and small, the other applied and large.</p>

<p>I don't think you can say one is a "better" school because it depends on what you are looking for. I personally tend to like big schools that offer everything, so I would've gone with HLS - despite the grading system and all.</p>

18

<p>I guess what I meant was that HMS has many more teaching hospitals than other medical schools and thus more faculty at these hospitals rather than at the Quad. In other words, many more faculty from clinical departments than from basic science departments.</p>

<p>At places like Stanford, the ratio will be smaller. </p>

<p>Since the average research budget for an investigator in a clinical department is usually smaller than an investigator in a basic science department, the grant money per investigator will be dependent on this ratio to a significant extent.</p>

19

<p>Ske93, if you had a problem with my PM to you, why didn't you respond privately through PM to me? </p>

<p>But anyway, since insist on making this dispute public, here goes. </p>

<p>
[quote]
1. Sakky puts way too much faith in US News rankings, which are deeply flawed. His reasoning is that YLS is ranked higher and higher yield and therefore it must be a better school. It’s informative to consider the following:</p>

<p>Pre-1990s (before U.S. News rankings started):
HLS yield ~70%
YLS yield ~50%</p>

<p>Since mid-1990s (soon after U.S. News started to rank YLS first)
HLS yield ~68%
YLS yield ~ 77%</p>

<p>Here's an article by a Yale Law professor Henry Hansmann that sheds some light:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp9901.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp9901.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"for many years, the Yale Law School's take-up rate - that is, the percentage of students who choose to attend Yale among those to whom Yale offers admission - remained fairly contant at around 50 percent. Then, in the early 1990s, the take-up rate rose rapidly to around 80 percent, where it has remained....... Why did Yale suddenly emerge as everyone's top choice among law schools? .... I suspect that a particular important factor was the advent of U.S. News and World Report's nationwide rankings of law schools.....In rankings published in 1992 and annually since then, Yale has held steady at number 1, while Harvard rebounded to the number 2 spot and has likewise remained there. Not surprisingly, the big jumps in Yale's take-up rate came with the classes entering in 1992 and 1993...."</p>

<p>So it’s people like Sakky who blindly believe rankings that have driven up YLS’s yield, which in turn perpetuates the rankings.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I don't "blindly" believe in rankings. I am simply reporting the news. YLS has a better yield than HLS does, and in particular, beats HLS in cross-admit yields. Like it or not, that is the truth. Whether it's because of the USNews rankings, or because of other rankings, the fact of the matter is, * it doesn't matter why*. For the purposes of this discussion, all that matter is that it is the truth. You can complain all you want about how USNews may or may not have influenced the yield numbers, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter who influenced the numbers. All that matters are the numbers themselves.</p>

<p>
[quote]
2. The LSAT and GPA difference between YLS and HLS is miniscule. According to the US News, the 25%-75% LSAT scores were 169-175 for HLS and 170-176 for YLS.
25-75% GPAs were 3.72-3.95 for HLS and 3.83-3.97 for YLS. </p>

<p>If you lined up the students and looked at the student right in the middle of the class (student #108 at YLS and #280 at HLS), yes, the #108 will have a very slightly higher GPA and LSATs. But it’s a mistake to just look at the median, and not the curve itself. When you plot out the Gaussian distribution of HLS and YLS, YLS student curve will completely disappear into the HLS curve, meaning that HLS contains all of the talent in YLS plus a heck of a lot more. It has a far deeper and larger talent pool. When you count from the top, the #108 at HLS will have significantly higher grades and scores than #108 at YLS. Using the U.S. News data, #108 at HLS will be in the top 20% of his/her HLS class and will have higher than 3.95 GPA and 175 LSATs (which corresponds to top 25%).</p>

<h1>108 at YLS, on the other hand, will have 3.9 GPA and 173 LSATs.</h1>

<p>Let’s consider other aspects:</p>

<h1>total J.D. candidates- HLS 1680, YLS 650</h1>

<h1>applications – HLS 6810, YLS 3667</h1>

<p>full-time faculty (excluding non-tenure track) - HLS 84, YLS 52
visiting faculty – HLS 150, YLS 56</p>

<h1>courses offered – HLS 250, YLS 185</h1>

<h1>volumes in library – HLS 2 million, YLS 800,000</h1>

<p>It becomes very clear that HLS has significantly more academic resources than YLS in aggregate and has a much greater talent pool than YLS, which translates into far greater influence in the legal world.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Again, first of all, nobody disputes that HLS is clearly a bigger school than YLS. When just bigger than somebody else, clearly you ought to also have more resources.</p>

<p>Secondly, nobody, least of all me, disputes that HLS is an excellent law school. That's not what is in dispute. What is in dispute are your previous words - that HLS is "by far" the most influential law school in the world. If that really is the case, then why exactly does YLS beat HLS on cross-admit yields? Are all those cross-admits being dumb? </p>

<p>
[quote]
If you consider all of the above, I think most reasonable people would agree that HLS is easily the most powerful and influential law school in the country. Yes, YLS is a significant presence and is an extremely high-quality law school, perhaps a little higher than HLS if you strictly considered the normalized values only, but overall HLS is the dominant law school in the land. Just as France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands are all important economic powers and their citizens may even enjoy a higher quality of life in some aspects than the U.S., but in the end, the U.S. is the only economic superpower.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Again, see above. Why is YLS beating HLS in cross-admit yields? </p>

<p>To extend your international analogy, would you rather be making the average income in the US, or the average income in Luxembourg? Personally, I'd take the latter, as that income is significantly higher than that of the former. And the truth of the matter is, whether you graduate from YLS or HLS, odds are you'll end up as an * average* graduate from either. More importantly, present-day law students apparently agree with me, as they tend to choose YLS over HLS. </p>

<p>So, * of course * HLS has a greater absolute number of high-achieving graduates than YLS does, just because HLS has far more people than YLS does. But, again, you're probably not going to become one of those high-achieving graduates from either school. You're probably going to be just an average graduate, so you have to worry about how well the average graduate does. </p>

<p>But besides, nobody is saying that HLS is a bad law school. Everybody, myself included, agrees that HLS is a great law school. But my point is, YLS is also a great law school and that you cannot say that HLS is "easily the most powerful and influential" of all law schools. Why can't you simply settle for what everybody can agree upon - that YLS and HLS are both highly powerful and influential law schools? </p>

<p>
[quote]
Sakky sent me a lengthy private email as a follow-up to a post in which we debated my claim that Harvard has “easily most powerful and influential professional schools” in the U.S.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I actually send it to you by PM, not by email. I now feel tempted to actually post the entire contents of the PM, as opposed to having you distort then. As I'm sure you remember, much of my PM had to do with all of Harvard's OTHER professional schools - notably, schools like SPH, the GSE, the GSD, etc. These are all professional schools at Harvard. Yet I think even you conceded that these professional schools are not "easily the most powerful and influential professional schools" in their particular disciplines. I said it once, I'll say it again - is the Harvard GSE really "easily the most powerful and influential" of all education schools out there? I think the Columbia University Teachers College would have quite a bit to say about that. Yet the Harvard GSE is a professional school, right? Is the Harvard School of Public Health "easily the most powerful and influential" of all public health schools out there? I think the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins might have something to say about that. Ske293, I see that you still have yet to defend your prior claim regarding these particular Harvard professional schools. </p>

<p>Look, I've said it before, I'll say it again. Harvard is an excellent institution that presents a wide variety of top-notch programs. We can all agree on that. Isn't that enough? Shouldn't we be satisfied with that? There is no need to go around making inflammatory comments like how every one of Harvard's professional schools are each the "easily the most powerful and influential" of their fields. There is no need to resort to such rhetoric. Harvard is a great university, with some of its programs being indeed the best in their field. But other great universities exist, with some of their programs being the best in their field. Let's just leave it at that.</p>

20

<p>You ask repeatedly why YLS has a higher yield than HLS. It obviously has a lot to do with the U.S. News rankings, which increased the YLS yield by 60% in just two years. Do you think YLS suddenly got better by 60% in two years? HLS's large size (which can be an asset to some people) and relatively rigid grading system are probably the other major factors.</p>

<p>But most people will agree that the yield is not a meaningful indicator of how "powerful and influential" a school is in the profession. Rather than go through the same arguments with you over and over, I'll let the readers ponder the meaning of "power and influence", examine the data I presented above, and reach their own conclusions.</p>

<p>Harvard is not merely one of many great universities. It is clearly ahead of the pack. I will close by quoting Yale President Richard Levin:</p>

<p>"Harvard is blessed with the broadest and deepest assembly of intellectual talent and academic resources in the world, and it is to Harvard that the whole world looks for leadership. These are mere facts, but, believe me, these are not easy things for a Yale president to say." </p>

<p><a href="http://www.yale.edu/opa/president/speeches/20011012.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.yale.edu/opa/president/speeches/20011012.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>