| Famous Alumni | |
- Henry Ward Beecher (Class of 1834) – preacher
- Melvil Dewey (Class of 1874) – inventor of the Dewey Decimal System
- Harlan Fiske Stone (Class of 1894) – chief justice of U.S. Supreme Court, 1941-46
- Calvin Coolidge (Class of 1895) – president of the United States, 1923-29
- Charles E. Merrill (Class of 1908) – co-founder of Merrill Lynch
- Clarence Birdseye (Class of 1910) – inventor of frozen foods
- Charles R. Drew (Class of 1926) – established first Red Cross blood bank
- Richard Wilbur (Class of 1942) – former U.S. Poet Laureate
- Henry Kendall (Class of 1950) – Nobel laureate
- Harold Varmus (Class of 1961) – Nobel laureate; former director of National Institutes of Health
- Joseph Stiglitz (Class of 1964) – Nobel laureate; former chief economist of World Bank
- Scott Turow (Class of 1970) – novelist (Burden of Proof, Presumed Innocent)
- Francisco Flores (Class of 1981) – former president of El Salvador
- Sung Joo Kim (Class of 1981) – managing director, Sung Joo International Ltd.
- Susannah Grant (Class of 1984) – screenwriter, "Erin Brockovich" and "Pocohontas"
- David Foster Wallace (Class of 1985) – author of "Infinite Jest" and "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"
- Jeffrey Wright (Class of 1987) – actor in "Basquiat," "Angels in America," and "Bring in Da Noise"
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