“That’s not important compared to unemployment and the lack of health care across this country,” says Marjorie Harris, senior adviser to Sharpton’s campaign. “The average person doesn’t care one way or another about the candidates’ academic credentials. They’re more concerned about the next bill that’s coming and can I keep a job.”

But according to Professor Nelson, academic credentials do matter to the American voter.

“There is a bizarre social class—an elitist bias among American voters who really distrust the poor boys who make good. The only presidents to have been impeached are the poorest Presidents. People who have gone to the best schools have been trusted,” he says.

His research into the educational background of every Presidential candidate since 1788 suggests that degrees from brand name universities are becoming more, not less, important as college graduates grow more numerous. He links the dominance of Yale this year as part of a trend for political aspirants to attend more and better universities than ever before.

“The irony is that a lot of these guys are legacies and that if we went on SATs then they’d be somewhere else,” Nelson says.

But whether or not they matter to voters, presidents’ academic credentials do matter in the history books, where their legacies are written permanently.

Assistant Professor of Government William G. Howell, who teaches Gov. 1540: “The American Presidency,” used rankings of Presidents compiled by C-SPAN surveys of historians and citizens in order to find the correlation between a President’s ranking and whether or not he attended Harvard.

“The data show that one can be 99 percent confident that Harvard presidents are better than Yale presidents,” he says, referring to a printout of statistics from his regression equation. Other characteristics correlated with a good ranking include holding office during war, being tall, coming from outside of New England, not dying in office from natural causes and having fewer children.

Carlos Diaz, a teaching fellow in the American Presidency course, also notes that despite the absence of Harvard candidates in the United States, many who have attended the University have gone on to win positions of power overseas, including the former Presidents of Mexico and Ecuador.

In fact, in the competition to produce big-time politicians, the all-time record favors Harvard over Yale, and Harvard over any other school, for that matter.

Seven past U.S. Presidents have studied at Harvard and five at Yale—the next closest contender is the College of William and Mary with Thomas Jefferson, John Tyler and James Monroe.

In addition to those candidates who were elected President, 10 Harvard and six Yale alums have won the nominations of major political parties, including vice-presidential nominees. And in the 108th Congress there are currently 16 senators from Harvard compared to a mere seven from Yale.

But lest either institution take too much credit for producing great leaders, Prof. Nelson points out that family connections—more than schooling—were responsible for the success of many elite alums.

“Junior Bush is related to no fewer than 16 former Presidents, but the all time record holder is Franklin Delano Roosevelt who has ancestral connections to 17 presidents,” he says.

But as much as people outside of Harvard dismiss the rivalry as irrelevant or even myopically elitist—the passions still burn strong among Harvard undergraduates.