Does anyone know where the former presidents went to school?

[LostInAnomie]

I received a stupid freeper forward today that listed the Democrats "top ten lies" and one of the "lies" was:

Lie #5: Bush is dumb. He is not smart enough to be president.

Truth: Bush has both an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree from Yale, an Ivy League college. He is only the second president in the history of our country to have such a degree.

Now, I know for a fact that this is not completely true because Bush didn't get his masters at Yale, but at Harvard (somehow he got accepted with a "C" average). And I know for sure that he is not the only one to graduate from an Ivy League University.

I would like to have some names and a link to show as proof. So does anybody have a link that shows where former presidents graduated from and what kind of degrees they have?

[maveric]

1. Degrees can be bought. Rhodes Scholarships cannot.

I cant believe that that moron passed his Masters Thesis. Poppy put his $$$$ to work and Lil Georgie has a Masters.

[LDS Jock]

2. I googled and found this

Yale
George Bush
George W Bush
Bill Clinton
Gerald R Ford
William H Taft


Harvard
John Adams
John Quincy Adams
George W Bush
Rutherford B Hayes
John F Kennedy
Franklin D Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt

Princeton
James Madison
Woodrow Wilson

None
Grover Cleveland
Millard Fillmore
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Johnson
Abraham Lincoln
Zachary Taylor
Martin Van Buren
George Washington

http://www.campvishus.org/PresBirthCollege.htm

[maveric]

5. I thought that Harry Truman never attended college?

[LDS Jock]

7. Thats odd isn't it?

That site lists him as attending Kansas City Law School but no undergrad work anywhere. Hmmm

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

10. Got an honorary degree

from Oxford, I believe, in the Latinized name "Harricum Truman". He did take some college courses at night, but don't think he ever graduated.

[LDS Jock]

3. More * info

From an article on CNN.com on affirmative action

If our President had the slightest sense of irony, he might have paused to ask himself, "Wait a minute. How did I get into Yale?" It wasn't because of any academic achievement: his high school record was ordinary. It wasn't because of his life experience--prosperous family, fancy prep school--which was all too familiar at Yale. It wasn't his SAT scores: 566 verbal and 640 math.


If those scores are accurate, (and they are higher than I would have guessed for him) there many, MANY people in this country more intellegent. Hey DUers, raise your hand if you outscored * on his SATs. For those that took the ACT, according to the University of Californa-Berkeley, an ACT of 26 corresponds to a SAT of 1180, a 27 to 1220, with *'s total of 1206.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/20/timep.affirm.action.tm/

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

12. Too long ago to remember

but I graduated suma cum laude (BS) and magna cum laude (Masters). Don't think Bush did that.

[Art_from_Ark]

4. Clinton has two degrees

one from Georgetown University and one from Yale.

Woodrow Wilson had three: Princeton, U. of Virginia, and a PhD from Johns Hopkins U.

[smirkymonkey]

6. Legacy

From a family as wealthy, corrupt and powerful as the Bush family, W was a shoo-in.

He stayed in due to the same privilege.

[JVS]

8. Both Roosevelts went to Harvard and dropped out of Columbia's law school

Teddy quit to go into politics.
Franklin passed the bar during law school and quit because back then you didn't need the law degree, it was the bar that mattered. My Grandfather passed the bar and never went to law school for a day. He learned enough at his job reading aloud to a blind lawyer.

[Fenris]

9. He has a history degree from Yale, if you can believe that

Which speaks VOLUMES for Yale.

His MBA did indeed come from Harvard.

The email is correct IF it is asserting that Bush is the first president in history with an MBA. If it's just asserting he's the only president with a Master's, it's full of shit.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

13. Other Yalies have a better grasp of history....

Sam Waterston, the actor, majored in History if memory served. But then he was at Yale on scholarship, and I'm sure he actually attended classes and wrote his own papers.

[Lisa]

11. Bush doesn't have a Master's from Yale ...

Lists of colleges and universities attended by US Presidents:
http://www.presidentsusa.net/education.html
http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/L/List-of-U.S.-Presidents-by-college-education.htm

You're right -- he has an MBA from Harvard Business School. I think he's the first one to hold an MBA. But Bill Clinton had a Yale Law School degree, and other Presidents had postgraduate degrees too.

http://www.1728.com/page6.htm

Woodrow Wilson had a PhD (earned prior to his presidency).
http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/W/Woodrow-Wilson.htm

MBAs are graduate degrees, but they are in a different category than purely academic degrees like most MSc, MA, or PhD programs. (Most of the MBAs I've met haven't referred to it as "grad school" -- they view it as a professional degree, with a mixture of theory and practical knowledge, where you get a formal certification like lawyers and teachers do.) I don't think a law degree or a PhD is inferior to an MBA. At the same time, I wouldn't argue that having one or the other necessarily means that a person is smarter than the rest of the room -- I have a PhD myself, and know a lot of folks who've never been to college who could outthink my department, and the law and business schools next door! Note that many of the most respected Presidents never went to college.

I've noticed that some of Bush's supporters pride themselves on anti-elitism, and play up the fact that intellectuals "may be book-smart but don't know about the real world" -- especially when somebody with a postgraduate degree criticizes their guy. So if they promptly turn around and laud W on the grounds that he has Ivy League credentials (and slam the Democrats who went to state universities) -- they're having it both ways. And you don't need any kind of postsecondary qualifications to see that's sloppy logic!

[Wapsie B]

14. Ronnie

went to Eureka College. That's in Illinois I believe.