Donald Trump, the dumbest student?
Although Trump usually claims to be "a really smart guy", one of his professors at the University of Pennsylvania reiterated for years that the now US president "was the dumbest student he ever had" and his former classmates seem coincide
A respected professor at the Wharton College of Business and Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, where Donald Trump studied the last two years of his career, described more than once the now president of the United States as the "dumbest of his students," according to revealed the Daily Kos portal.
"William T. Kelley told me more than a hundred times over three decades that 'Donald Trump was the dumbest student he ever had," Frank DiPrima, who for almost 50 years was a friend of the teacher, told the portal.
Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity, but long before he was considered a political figure. Kelley often referred to Trump's arrogance, saying that he came to Wharton thinking that he already knew everything, "Diprima said.
Professor William T. Kelley, who received the Herbert W. Hess Memorial Award in 1954, passed away in 2011 at the age of 94.
The president of the United States has repeatedly boasted of being "a really smart guy" and "a very good student at the best school in the country." He even, he told reporters that he graduated as "first of his class". Trump studied at the University of Pennsylvania from 1966 until his graduation in 1968.
In 2011, during the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump criticized then-President Barack Obama's performance as a student, stating that he was a "terrible student" and questioning his studies at Columbia University and Harvard Law School, which are part of the prestigious Ivy league.
Obama graduated from Columbia with a political science degree in 1983, then attended Harvard Law School where he graduated magna cum laude in 1991. At law school, Obama was also elected president of the prestigious Harvard Law magazine.
An investigation by The Daily Pennsylvanian showed that Trump was not exactly the top of his class and that he also graduated without honors.
Reports of Trump's ratings at Wharton vary. In a 1985 biography of Trump, Jerome Tuccille wrote that the magician was not an honor student and "spent a lot of time on business activities outside of the University."
Another biographer, Gwenda Blair, wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton as a special and "friendly" favor to his family. The officer had met Trump's older brother, Freddy.
Various testimonies over the years also reveal that Trump's classmates doubt the real estate mogul was an academic powerhouse.
"He wasn't in any kind of leadership. I certainly doubt he was the smartest guy in the class," said Steve Perelman, a 1968 Wharton classmate and former news editor for the Daily Pennsylvanian.
Some classmates speculated that Trump skipped classes, and that he traveled to New York on the weekends.
The president has long refused to publish his academic records, and the University of Pennsylvania has a policy against publishing student grades.
