PHILADELPHIA — President Trump has spoken frequently about his undergraduate success at Wharton, the University of Pennsylvania’s top-notch business school.

But while claims of Trump’s academic prowess at the Ivy League school have been around for decades, questions about how strong his record actually was continue to swirl.

The 1968 Wharton graduate’s name does not appear in a report of dean’s list students from that year or among students who graduated with honors, according to records from the university and its student newspaper.

Claims that Trump was a top student at Wharton appear to have first surfaced in 1973, when a New York Times profile reported that he graduated first in his class. No attribution was given for that statement. Another early Times profile, in 1976, also said he was first in his class, and the assertion has been repeated many times in the decades since.

The president has claimed over the years that he “got very good marks” and “was a really good student.”

But records indicate he was not among the top students in his graduating class.

Advertisement

In October 1968, the Daily Pennsylvanian, the independent student newspaper at Penn, published a list of dean’s list students for the 1967-68 school year, when Trump graduated. Trump’s name wasn’t on it.

And a Penn commencement program from 1968 lists Trump as graduating from Wharton with a bachelor of science in economics, but does not include his name among those who received honors or other awards. The program lists 15 students who graduated cum laude from Wharton that year, four of whom graduated magna cum laude and two with summa cum laude honors.

The debate about Trump’s academic record was renewed this week, when the Daily Pennsylvanian posted a story that included the 1968 documents and quoted alumni who offered varied accounts of Trump’s academic abilities.

Questions about his record lingered since the 1980s, when both The New York Times and New York magazine published stories refuting the first-in-class claim.


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.