<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>
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<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>
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<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>