# Bush Gore GPAs?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 21, 2006, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653 "2006-08-21T21:01:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@artnoll](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/artnoll)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2006, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/1 "2006-08-21T21:01:54Z")
Anyone know how where to find this info?
Who has a higher Grade Point Average -Al Gore or George W. Bush? For that matter , Kerry, Clinton, rumsfeld, my cat… :dubious:
The political banter on the internet leans to everyone claiming that their preferred candidate has the lead.
Can this be definitively answered?
I thank you for your time. If anyone has already addressed this or has the info elsewhere a point in the correct direction would be most appreciated.
Thank You,
Art
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### Author:  [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2006, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/2 "2006-08-22T01:29:12Z")
[http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/07/yale\_grades\_portray\_kerry\_as\_a\_lackluster\_student/](http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/07/yale_grades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_student/)
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### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2006, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/3 "2006-08-22T02:25:49Z")
Gore Wiki
> [@](#):
>
> Education
> Gore attended the elite St. Albans School where he ranked 25th (of 51) in his senior class.[5] In preparation for his college applications, Al Gore scored a 1355 on his SAT (625 in verbal and 730 in math). [5] Al Gore’s IQ scores, from tests administered at St. Alban’s School in 1961 and 1964 (his freshman and senior years) respectively, have been recorded as 133 and 134. [5]
>
> In 1965, Gore enrolled at Harvard College, the only university that he applied to. His roommate (in Dunster House) was actor Tommy Lee Jones. He scored in the lower fifth of the class for two years in a row [8] and, after finding himself bored with his classes in his declared English major, Gore switched majors and worked hard in his government courses and graduated from Harvard in June 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government. [5] After returning from the military he took religious studies courses at Vanderbilt and then entered the university’s law school. He left Vanderbilt without a degree when he left to run for an open seat in Tennessee’s 3rd Congressional District in 1976.
[Bush](http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2004/08/kerry_and_bush.html)
> [@](#):
>
> Before he was 40, George W. Bush was accepted as a “legacy” student at Yale University, where he blew off classes and graduated with a GPA variously described as 1.68 or 2.0. His family’s friends pulled connections to get him into the Texas Air National Guard, and to get him accepted for flight training despite the lowest acceptable score on the test. In both cases, he magically jumped ahead of hundreds of other people on waiting lists for those positions through absolutely no merit or achievement of his own.
Clinton wiki
> [@](#):
>
> Clinton received a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (B.S.F.S.) degree from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., where he became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega, worked for Senator J. William Fulbright, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford. While at Oxford, he played rugby union as a lock, and later in life he played for the Little Rock Rugby club in Arkansas. There he also participated in the Vietnam War protest movement. After Oxford, Clinton obtained a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Yale Law School in 1973. While at Yale, he began dating classmate Hillary Rodham. They married in 1975 and their only child, Chelsea, was born in 1980.
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### Author:  [@Stan\_Shmenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Shmenge)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2006, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/4 "2006-08-22T13:54:45Z")
It has been stated in the Right Wing Media that W had a higher GPA than Gore or Kerry, I don’t recall, and I don’t know if it is true, and even if it is, a GPA is not something I would care to bet our future on. I would rather have an honest man of average intelligence than a devious man of high intelligence. Any day.
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### Author:  [@Stan\_Shmenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stan_Shmenge)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2006, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/5 "2006-08-22T13:58:05Z")
**Al Gore’s IQ scores, from tests administered at St. Alban’s School in 1961 and 1964 (his freshman and senior years) respectively, have been recorded as 133 and 134.**
Mine has been repeatedly measured at 138-140. Make me the damn President! Oh, I forgot, we don’t elect Presidents based on IQ scores.
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### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2006, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/6 "2006-08-22T14:13:59Z")
> [@Happy Wanderer](#):
>
> **Al Gore’s IQ scores, from tests administered at St. Alban’s School in 1961 and 1964 (his freshman and senior years) respectively, have been recorded as 133 and 134.**
>
> Mine has been repeatedly measured at 138-140. Make me the damn President! Oh, I forgot, we don’t elect Presidents based on IQ scores.
And we’re quite lucky we don’t. I’m in the aforesaid IQ range, and my reign as President would end in death, terror, tears and oatmeal. Possibly not in that order. High IQ people often make miserable leaders.
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2006, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/7 "2006-08-22T17:53:14Z")
> [@Happy Wanderer](#):
>
> It has been stated in the Right Wing Media that W had a higher GPA than Gore or Kerry, I don’t recall, and I don’t know if it is true, and even if it is, a GPA is not something I would care to bet our future on. I would rather have an honest man of average intelligence than a devious man of high intelligence. Any day.
If the Right Wing Media bring it up, it’s not to make George W. look like a genius. Rather, it’s to dispel the notion that his opponents were geniuses.
Al Gore and George Bush have a lot in common: they’re both children of privilege, the sons of welathy Senators, and both went to elite colleges because of their families’ connections. Once in those colleges, they both appear to have screwed around, goofed off, and gotten mediocre grades.
The only difference is, liberals have generally given Al Gore a free pass, and treated him like an intellectual- which the record indicates he isn’t.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2006, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/8 "2006-08-22T19:39:20Z")
> [@astro](#):
>
> Gore Wiki
> [Bush](http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2004/08/kerry_and_bush.html)
>
> Clinton wiki
Wow. So to give a factual answer to the OP, you go to wiki for Gore and Clinton, but for Bush you go to what is essentially I\_hate\_bush.com. Nice touch. Wiki lists [Bush’s GPA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_George_W._Bush) at Yale to have been 2.35/4.0, and the Washington Post listed S.A.T. scores of 566 (verbal) and 640 (math).
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### Author:  [@jimbeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimbeam)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2006, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/9 "2006-08-22T22:53:28Z")
What I’ve read thus far and what I’ve known previously is that Clinton was very smart academically.
Gore did pretty well too. GPA in the 3.11 area
Kerry and Bush, not too bright. If they didn’t have money backing their asses up they’d have been kicked out. I think they both wound up with GPA’s in the low 2.0-2.5 range AT BEST. But earlier scores indicate they made a shitload of D’s. I don’t know about you guys but when I was in college too many D’s and you might be packing your bags.
I read a letter once upon a time (just some photocopy on the net and yeah I know, it had to have been bullshit, right?)
Anyway, before GWB was elected POTUS it was a letter from his fifth grade teacher. She was describing little George’s reading problem. From the way she described his reading problems I’d swear he was dyslexic. The letter has since "disappeared. Like I said it was before he ran for pres.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2006, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/10 "2006-08-22T23:02:47Z")
> [@jimbeam](#):
>
> What I’ve read thus far and what I’ve known previously is that Clinton was very smart academically.
Well, you don’t get to be a Rhodes Scholar by goofing off. No question the guy was both smart and he did well academically. Kerry and Bush probably didn’t “apply themselves” as the nuns used to say (judging form their SAT scores vs their grades).
> [@](#):
>
> I read a letter once upon a time (just some photocopy on the net and yeah I know, it had to have been bullshit, right?)
> Anyway, before GWB was elected POTUS it was a letter from his fifth grade teacher. She was describing little George’s reading problem. From the way she described his reading problems I’d swear he was dyslexic. The letter has since "disappeared. Like I said it was before he ran for pres.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was dyslexic. I doubt, though, that dyslexia was diagnosed all that well when he was growing up. I’m about 10 years younger, and we never had any “dyslexics” in class-- they were just called “slow”. Times were tough, back in the day! 🙂
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### Author:  [@jimbeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimbeam)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2006, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/11 "2006-08-23T00:03:23Z")
Apparently he (Bush) does have dyslexia along with his brother Neil. Now how the hell did I miss that. I suspected it but never heard him or anyone else admit it.
“The woman who knew that I had dyslexia --” I never interviewed her." --George W. Bush, responding to a magazine article claiming he suffered from dyslexia, Orange, Calif., Sept. 15, 2000
> **[The 40 Dumbest Things George W. Bush Ever Said](https://www.liveabout.com/dumbest-bush-quotes-of-all-time-2734076)**
>
> You have to appreciate a politician who makes us laugh. Revisit some of the wackiest, craziest, and just plain baffling quotes from George W. Bush.
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### Author:  [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2006, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/12 "2006-08-23T06:07:09Z")
> [@jimbeam](#):
>
> Apparently he (Bush) does have dyslexia along with his brother Neil. Now how the hell did I miss that. I suspected it but never heard him or anyone else admit it.
>
> “The woman who knew that I had dyslexia --” I never interviewed her." --George W. Bush, responding to a magazine article claiming he suffered from dyslexia, Orange, Calif., Sept. 15, 2000
>
> [40 Classic Bushisms and Gaffes](http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms2000.htm)
Apparently he mixes up Qs and Ns at the end of words.
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### Author:  [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2006, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/13 "2006-08-23T06:36:28Z")
> [@astorian](#):
>
> The only difference is, liberals have generally given Al Gore a free pass, and treated him like an intellectual- which the record indicates he isn’t.
That’s a pretty great leap, I’d say. While a good GPA is not necessarily an indication of genius, a poor college GPA is no more proof that someone isn’t an intellectual once he hits his 50’s. Exactly what the word means is a pretty fuzzy question in this context, but presumably it means something like “smart + engaged + intellectually curious + willing to change views in face of contrary evidence.” Far be it from me to say whether that applies to either the former Vice President or the current president (although certainly I have some ideas on the subject). But regardless of how the word applies to either of these particular dudes, the face that one is a pot-smoking goof off at 20 doesn’t mean he can’t be an intellectual decades later once he’s reordered the priorities of his life. Shit, it took me less than a decade to go from a 2.6 (booze-fueled undergrad) to a 3.8 (law school). And if I might blow my own trumpet a moment, there are those that would call me an intellectual today.
–Cliffy
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### Author:  [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2006, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/14 "2006-08-23T06:38:32Z")
Argh. That should be “the **fact** that one is a pot-smoking goof off…”
–Cliffy
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### Author:  [@Will\_Repair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Will_Repair)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2006, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/15 "2006-08-23T17:21:45Z")
> [@astorian](#):
>
> Al Gore and George Bush have a lot in common…
>
> The only difference is…
Another difference is military service. Gore went to Viet Nam. Bush marked the box that he was not willing to serve overseas.
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### Author:  [@Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carnac_the_Magnificent)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2006, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-gore-gpas/369653/16 "2006-08-23T23:26:14Z")
> [@Will Repair](#):
>
> Another difference is military service. Gore went to Viet Nam. .
True. Gore carried a locked and loaded typewriter through the jungle. 😉