"Your classes will be small from day one, your professors will know your name...you'll have tons of opportunities to interact with them, and you'll get to know virtually everyone in your year pretty quickly," said Ali Ahsan '99, a first year law student at YLS and a Crimson editor.

One YLS professor says he thinks the smaller student body creates a different atmosphere.

"[The size] makes the institution of Yale Law School feel more humane and like a community," says Jay L. Pottenger Jr., a professor at YLS, who taught at HLS in 1985-86 academic year.

For example, while he was teaching at Harvard, Pottenger says, one day he greeted a student by name in the hall, and she was taken aback and said it was the first time in her three years at the school a professor had said 'hello' or even acknowledged her existence.

Assistant Provost Wald says that Yale's smaller student body means the physical size of the campus is smaller. The classroom and faculty offices are in same building, and dorms are directly across from classroom building. This means that "you have to run into professors," she says.

But, some say, more students means more variety. While it may be virtually impossible to know everybody in your class at HLS, there is a high likelihood of finding fellow students with similar interests.

"There are a critical mass [at HLS] of other students who are interesting in same things," Wald says.