Re: Has anyone here chosen Harvard over Yale?
Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2012 3:34 pm
I can't speak about HLS's placement, but firms do "flock to Yale." I'm unsure how firm hiring could be better hiring at HLS, because literally everyone at YLS has plenty of firm offers. In terms of 1L summer opportunities, you'll also have your pick of the litter. I had USAO/DOJ/clerk/firm offers, which seemed to be the norm. I don't think I had an unusually strong background prior to YLS that would account for this either.Applying_Late wrote:I'm going to go say that choosing H over Y might not be the smartest decision unless you have compelling reasons why you want to be at H. A good chunk of people from H last year couldn't land a corporate job--if you plan to go to the next ASW, just ask and be persistent about it. While I am not a Yale student, I have heard from current students that firms flock to Yale and can't get enough of them: the problem is that most of the Yale kids don't want to do corporate law; nevertheless, the opportunities are just too good. As far as being on LR, which has some correlation to a good career, Yale's is much easier to get into. Relationships with professors, again strong correlation for getting clerkships: Y >>> H. How about opportunities for summer 1L jobs? Yale again (no grades for employers to gauage). And what about international? Yale, unless you care to appeal to lay people, but those people don't give you jobs. Maybe I would agree about H over Y if you planned to work in Turkmenistan.
The New Haven argument is not really a great one: many Yale 2Ls and certainly 3Ls commute from NYC, and I don't see how Boston competes with NYC (unless again you have some strong connection to Boston). Are you willing to throw away all these positives because you can't stand new haven for one year?
As far as faculty is concerned, yes they may have a stronger posse, but don't forget about ratio. Yale has roughly the same amount of faculty members for three times less the student population. I'm sorry but that just means way more competition to get a letter of rec. Have you considered what these faculty can do for you too? H professors in general are difficult to approach; Y professors are much more approachable. Lastly, Yale forces you to work with two faculty members; thus, you are forced to develop relationships which can help place you in clerkships. Remember it's the phone calls that count.
The last time I was at Harvard, one student was talking about all these game changers that Harvard has. I was very curious to what he meant, and it turned out some of the "game changers" were the student bar--open until 10--in the new Wasserstein Ctr, the bigger library, and that's about it....
I'm not trashing Harvard, but I really would like to see some compelling reasons as to why it's better than Y or at least equal to it.