Yale & Politics

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
1

<p>The following is a snippet from this extremely interesting article: </p>

<p><a href="http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_05/presidents.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_05/presidents.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>"Historian Peter Dobkin Hall, who taught at the School of Management for many years and is now at Harvard's Kennedy School, knows the histories of Harvard and Yale like no one else. He argues that there is another reason why Yale's political elite is in ascendancy now, compared with that of [declining] Harvard. They both "created national elites" in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, says Hall. But in the first half of the twentieth century "Yale excelled in creating national networks of leaders and influential types -- kind of a centripetal force -- while Harvard leadership tended to be concentrated in powerful institutions located in major metropolitan centers." </p>

<p>In the century after 1760, the percentage of Yale graduates born in Connecticut declined from 84 percent to just 27 percent. Perhaps even more important, the percentage settling in Connecticut after graduation went from 65 percent in 1760 all the way down to 13 percent on the eve of the Civil War. Yale has had a long history, in other words, of drawing students from around the country -- and sending them back out just as far. When Hall looked at the period from 1900 to 1940, he found that fewer than half of Yale's entering undergraduates came from New England, while Harvard's undergraduates were overwhelmingly recruited from the Northeast, especially New England. Yale accepted roughly twice Harvard's percentage from the Midwest, three times that from the South. </p>

<p>Hall has not investigated the classes graduating in the second half of the twentieth century. He finds it interesting, however, "that most of the current Yale political eminences -- the younger Bush, Dean, and Lieberman -- all come out of localized political cultures rather than, like Kerry, coming up through the Beltway-anchored national political culture." </p>

<p>Consider the geography of Harvard's chief executives: the Adamses and JFK from Boston, the Roosevelts from New York. Now Yale's: William Howard Taft (Ohio), Gerald Ford (Michigan); the Bushes (not just Connecticut, but also Texas); Bill Clinton (Arkansas). Even the vice presidents: John C. Calhoun was from South Carolina, Dick Cheney from Wyoming. </p>

<p>"Yale's influence is based on the creation of elites everywhere else, and they're interconnected, through class organizations," explains Hall. "Yale was the first of the institutions to have classes that convene regularly and stay in touch -- very self-consciously constructing a network of people staying in touch with one another. With alumni directories, they could go to any small town and know where the Yalies were."</p>

2

<p>Relative to any other American university, Yale has dominated American politics, business, nonprofits, theaters, and the music, art, architecture and drama worlds almost since it was founded. Yale is a bit smaller than other schools so this is sometimes harder to see - but its power (in terms of how much the students love the school and how much they socialize with one another) is due in a major way to how small and selective the school is. It's the nation's most selective undergraduate college, and if you look at the Law School and arts schools, and increasingly all the other graduate schools, for example, it totally blows everyone away - Yale Law's yield rate is over 90% while the next best law school (Harvard) hovers around a pathetic 60%.</p>

3

<p>To be fair, while Yale College dominates Harvard College in the American political scene, it is Harvard Law that dominates Yale Law as far as graduate school is concerned. For example, there are over 20 Congressmen who went to Harvard Law in addition to over 10 Senators (12 I believe) who went to HLS. That's over 10% of our US Senate that went to HLS!</p>

<p>Not to lose focus, though. Yale College remains the dominant undergrad force in American politics, even if slightly, over Harvard College.</p>

4

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<p>i would dispute the claim. for example, the current secretary of defense, white house chief of staff, senate majority leader, director of the FBI, and the newest supreme court justice are all princeton men. just as many others are harvard men.</p>

5

<p>
[quote]
the current secretary of defense, white house chief of staff, senate majority leader, director of the FBI, and the newest supreme court justice are all princeton men.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I believe there are 2 Senators who went to Princeton and handfull of Congressmen. Princeton is an excellent school(!), but it doesn't "dominate" like Yale does. </p>

<p>Yale, for example, has had a grad on the Presidential ballot in every election since 1972.</p>

6

<p>GeorgeS: Harvard Law has a much bigger class size (550) than Yale Law (220). Once you control for class size, the difference is nil.</p>

<p>Also note that despite Yale College's supposed "dominance," it is Harvard College that dominates the cross-admit game. Almost 80% choose Harvard.</p>

7

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<p>remember, your initial point was that yale college is the "dominant [<em>]undergrad[</em>] force." the above statement, however, is only true if you include yale <em>law</em> grads like ford and clinton.</p>

<p>even then, i'm not sure it's true. the 1980 presidential election, for example, pitted a naval academy alum vs. a eureka college man.</p>

<p>also, at least three senators are princeton undergrad alums: bond, frist, and sarbanes. i doubt many more are yale college alums.</p>

8

<p>More importantly - who cares?</p>

9

<p>
[quote]
remember, your initial point was that yale college is the "dominant[<em>]undergrad[</em>] force." the above statement, however, is only true if you include yale <em>law</em> grads like ford and clinton.

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</p>

<p>So lets count the Harvard College grads, then. Yale College is obviously still the "winner" in this race, even if slightly. </p>

<p>
[quote]
GeorgeS: Harvard Law has a much bigger class size (550) than Yale Law (220). Once you control for class size, the difference is nil.

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</p>

<p>Your observation is certainly correct, however, Harvard Law still comes out ahead when you adjust. Besides, how much good does the "well, Yale is smaller" argument do you when you're in the US Senate and you need as many alumni contacts as possible? </p>

<p>Draw your own conclusions. Mine is that when it comes to American politics, Yale College dominates in the undergrad department and Harvard Law dominates in the Grad department (even if other schools come incredibly close).</p>

10

<p><a href="http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/fastfacts.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.law.yale.edu/admissions/fastfacts.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The yield at Yale Law School currently stands at 87%, which is excellent, but not over 90% as Poster X claims.</p>

<p>The yield at Harvard Law School is 70%, not 60% as Poster X claims.</p>

<p>Yale Law's yield was not always that high. In fact, before the U.S. News started to rank Yale Law first, largely based on arbitrary criteria, Yale's yield was a miserable 50%. Twenty percentage points below Harvard's.</p>

<p>Here's an article by a Yale Law professor Henry Hansmann:</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>Yale's higher yield is almost entirely attributable to its ranking by a second-rate newsweekly magazine. It should be forever thankful to the U.S. News and perhaps consider changing its name to Yale-U.S. News Law School.</p>

11

<p>This is copied from a post elsewhere but I think is relevant:</p>

<p>In terms of the Law School, Stanford and Yale have class size that is 1/3 of Harvard. The U.S. News uses criteria that puts large programs at a severe disadvantage such as the amount of money spent per student, student-faculty ratio, and acceptance rate. What is arguably much more important is the quality of instruction and how the graduates perform after graduation and here Harvard is undisputably the most successful and influential law school in America. 12% of the entire U.S. Senate is composed of graduates of a single law school, Harvard. Looking at the composition of the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Appeals Court, the U.S. Attorney General's Office, the district attorney's offices nationwide, and the top law firms in the U.S., Harvard Law graduates are the dominant force. Yale does do a better job of churning out academics on a per capita basis, but since Harvard's class size is 3 times as big, in absolute numbers, Harvard still produces more academics and many more real world lawyers than these schools.</p>

12

<p>Harvard College has produced way more U.S. Presidents, U.S. senators, cabinet members, and U.S. Supreme Court justices. I've posted some of these statistics elsewhere. It's true that Yale has had a few prominent politicians recently, but this is what's called a "noise", not the signal. In the real world, there are always statistical fluctuations, and one cannot decipher a pattern based on a very small numbers sampled during a short period. </p>

<p>Once in a blue moon, Yale might actually do something better than Harvard, let's say more Rhodes scholars in one year every ten years, but this is simply a meaningless noise. If you look at a decade, or two decades, the real pattern emerges. As much as Poster X loves to relish these little anomalies and talk about it forever on this board, they don't mean a darn thing.</p>

13

<p>I'm also tired of poster X repeating "most selective undergraduate college" blah blah blah all over and over. Never mind that it's for just one year and by the slightest number and of course amounts to meaningless background noise. There is some intellectual dishonestly in conveniently glossing over the fact that it's clearly easier for smaller schools to have a lower acceptance rate. Pretty much all of Harvard's grad schools are several times the size of their competitors - Harvard Law Schools vs. Yale Law School, Harvard Business School vs. Stanford Business School, Harvard Medical School vs. Johns Hopkins Medical School - and have higher acceptance rates - but so what? They also have much greater resources (e.g. HBS has more than 3 times the teaching cases than Stanford), more faculty, more courses, more research opportunities, larger library, more money, more programs, better alumni network, pretty much more of everything. An acceptance rate of 7% versus 10% is utterly meaningless especially if the school with the 10% acceptance rate is much larger.</p>

<p>Also, Yale has been desperately trying to appear selective by admitting a smaller number of applicants than it can afford, trumpeting its "Ivy record low" acceptance rate, and then quietly taking people off the waiting list one by one to artificially inflate its yield. Why hasn't Yale announced its yield this year when every other school has - could it be that it's not as high as it would like? Byerly also pointed out elsewhere on this board that Yale's actual yield last year was merely 70.4% but they've been repeatedly citing 73% and 74%, apparently hoping that others will repeat these figures and perpetuate the fraud. </p>

<p>If you really wanted a numerical measure of a school's desirability, it should take into account 1) acceptance rate, 2) size of school, and 3) yield, since just because lots of people apply to a school, it does not mean that it is their top choice.</p>

<p>The desirability index should then be calculated as:</p>

<p>(size of school)x(yield)/(acceptance rate).</p>

<p>Based on these criteria, the desirability indices for the schools are:</p>

<p>Harvard College = (6563)x(78.3)/(9.3)=55256
Yale College = (5316)x(70.4)/(8.6) = 43517</p>

<p>I used last year's yield numbers and this year's "record" acceptance rate to make it more favorable to Yale, but Harvard still clearly has a better admissions profile based on this index.</p>

<p>With the law schools,</p>

<p>Harvard Law School = (551)x(70)/(11.5)= 3354
Yale Law School = (183) x(87)/(6.9) = 2307</p>

<p>So Harvard again has a better admissions profile. Given that it's 3 times the size of Yale, it's pretty amazing that Harvard's acceptance rate is less than twice that of Yale. This is because Harvard Law draws nearly double the number of applications per year. It is the most sought after law school in the U.S.</p>

14

<p>ske293, that figure is surprising -- would you have the application numbers for HLS versus YLS?</p>

15

<p>YALE VS. HARVARD - Undergrad Perspective</p>

<p>** PRESIDENTS: **
Yale College: 3
Harvard College: 5</p>

<p>VICE-PRESIDENTS:
Yale College: 3
Harvard College: 2</p>

<p>US SENATORS:
Yale College: 26
Harvard College: 9</p>

<p>*GOVERNORS: *
Yale College: 20
Harvard College: 2 (about 15 if you include grad schools)</p>

<p>** SUPREME COURT JUSTICES: **
Yale College: 8
Harvard College 4</p>

<p>YALE VS. HARVARD - Law School Perspective</p>

<p>** PRESIDENTS: **
Yale College: 2
Harvard College: 1</p>

<p>VICE-PRESIDENTS:
Yale College: 1
Harvard College: 0</p>

<p>US SENATORS:
Yale College: 6
Harvard College: 16</p>

<p>*GOVERNORS: *
Yale College: 3
Harvard College: 10</p>

<p>** SUPREME COURT JUSTICES: **
Yale College: 9
Harvard College 12</p>

<p>VERDICT: Yale College dominates American Politics in the undergrad department while Harvard Law dominates American Politics in the graduate department. In other words...</p>

<p>Yale College > Harvard College</p>

<p>Harvard Law > Yale Law</p>

<p>SOURCES: </p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yale_University_people#Presidents_.26_Vice_Presidents.2C_Other_Heads_of_State_and_Prime_Ministers%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Yale_University_people#Presidents_.26_Vice_Presidents.2C_Other_Heads_of_State_and_Prime_Ministers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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

16

<p>There is a grammatical error in the previous post. It should be "Harvard Law" and "Yale Law" underneath "YALE VS. HARVARD - Law School Perspective". I accidently left the "Yale College" and "Harvard College" syntax when I was talking about the law schools.</p>

<p>Furthermore, when you add up all of the Harvard and Yale Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices in America's 230 year history, you get the following break-down:</p>

<p>Yale College - 60
Harvard College - 22</p>

<p>Yale Law - 21
Harvard Law - 39</p>

<p>Facts speak for themselves. Yale College and Harvard Law are historically the leading institutions when it comes to the education of American Statesmen.</p>

17

<p>First, to answer transfer 101's question, HLS had 7046 applicants last year. YLS had 11106 over 3 years, or 3702 per year. YLS is an excellent, excellent law school and you probably won't regret going there. But so is HLS, and HLS has much more to offer in terms of resources. Overall HLS is much better known and occupies a special place in the minds and hearts of the American public as well as people all over the world. Why do you think there are so many more movies and books about Harvard Law students? People all over the world have read "One L" and "Paperchase" and have seen "Soul Man", "The Firm", "A Few Good Men", and "Legally Blonde". If you say that you went to Harvard Law School, you become an instant mini-celebrity anywhere you go in the world.</p>

<p>Second, to address the stats provided by George S, "prominent graduates" listed in the wikipedia articles are NOT complete!!! Remember that Wikipedia articles are written by amateurs, and a particular individual is listed as a "prominent graduate" only if someone remembers to put that person in. Your statistics are ALL WRONG. </p>

<ol>
<li><p>To say that there have been only 9 U.S. Senators who went to Harvard College is ABSURD to SAY THE LEAST. There are probably 9 U.S. Senators right now who went to Harvard College, and hundreds more during the history of this country. Why, Ted Kennedy, JFK, Robert Kennedy all went to Harvard College, so you are saying that in addition to these 3, there have been only 3 more U.S. Senators from Harvard College, EVER? What about the 17th century, when Harvard was the ONLY college in the U.S.? What college did all the senators go to? </p></li>
<li><p>There have been only 10 governors from Harvard College? Pretty much every Governor of Massachusetts in history went to Harvard College, and I'm pretty damn certain that Harvard people have been governors in other states, too. </p></li>
<li><p>There are two Harvard College graduates sitting on the Supreme Court right now. You are saying that there have been only two more in the past 370 years of the existence of Harvard College? </p></li>
</ol>

<p>If you want the real data, get a complete list of every single Senator, every governor, and every Supreme Court justice in the past four centuries, and check where they went to college. That's the only way. I'm too lazy to do it myself, but I can tell you with certainly that Harvard will blow away Yale by a mile. It's always been a much greater source of political power than Yale. Pretty much all the U.S. Congressmen, Republicans and Democrats alike, go through the Kennedy School for training once they get elected. The Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School draws political luminaries, heads of state, and Washington power brokers every week like you would never believe. They come to lecture, study, and teach at Harvard because they know that a huge part of the American political elite originated from Cambridge.</p>

18

<p>
[quote]
I'm too lazy to do it myself

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</p>

<p>Well, I'm not. I've looked for a comprehensive list and wikipedia is as close as it comes. I've also checked the NNDB database as well. Furthermore, keeping the assumption that wikipedia only includes the "notables", and bearing in mind that, according to wikipedia, the "notable" Yale College grads far outnumber the Harvard College grads, that in itself is enough to justify the dominance of Yale College over Harvard College.</p>

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[quote]
What about the 17th century, when Harvard was the ONLY college in the U.S.? What college did all the senators go to?

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</p>

<p>The Federal Republic did not exist in the 17th century. At our country's inception, in 1789, both Yale (1701) and Harvard (1636) were well established schools.</p>

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[quote]
[Harvard has] always been a much greater source of political power than Yale

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</p>

<p>Don't get confused. Harvard is primarily noted for its graduate schools. There are MORE Harvard grad politicians, but they primarily come from Harvard's graduate schools. When it comes to an undergraduate education, Yale College remains dominant regarding American politics. </p>

<p>I'm glad you seem to agree with my analysis of Harvard Law's dominance, but your, "I can tell you with certainly that Harvard [college] will blow away Yale [college] by a mile," coupled with the, "I'm too lazy to do it myself" argument is "ABSURD to SAY THE LEAST".
.</p>

19

<p>Well, that there are more Yale College graduates listed in the Yale Wikipedia article than Harvard College graduates in the Harvard article really only suggests one point. That Yalies are much more willing to spend time editing these amateurish articles and that they are much more eager to advertise the accomplishments of their alumni. Harvard simply has too many other things to brag about that they don't bother listing all their famous dead people, that's all. And Harvard students prefer to spend their time on more worthwhile things.</p>

<p>I'm glad that you are proud to be a Yale College grad. If you insist on believing that it's dominant in American politics, you are quite entitled to do so. It just does not happen to be true.</p>

20

<p>Good point about the founding of the country. I did remember that and was trying to edit it but it wouldn't let me because too much time passed.</p>

<p>If you want to prove that Yale College is dominant in politics, you have to supply the numbers. With all due respect, your opinion doesn't count as fact.</p>

<p>"Harvard is primarily noted for its graduate schools". Says who? For hundreds of years, Harvard College stood by itself atop the nation's higher educational institutions. And it's the graduates of Harvard College who dominate the student population at the Harvard graduate schools. Famous Harvard people who went to Harvard graduate schools also very often went to Harvard College as well. Two of the current Supreme Court justices are Harvard College-Harvard Law School grads.</p>