Better grades at Yale: Kerry or Bush?

[terryg11]

Hannity was very rabid today in defending W. and went off on how could Kerry call W. stupid when Bush got better grades than Kerry did at Yale. Were their grades ever made public? I see to recall Bush had gotten so-so grades but I don't recall if I ever saw Kerry's. I just figured he did much better than the current prez

[Richard Steele]

1. self-delete; I was wrong!

[Hepburn]

2. IIRC,

the grade point averages of Kerry and Bush at Yale were nearly identical. Neither was a great student.

[terryg11]

6. grades don't mean everything

they show how well you studied and did your work but are not always a great measuring stick of intelligence.

[liberalpragmatist]

3. Kerry got terrible grades his Freshman year

And then improved so that his grades were decent.

He was, however, far more involved on campus than Bush. He was very committed to the debate team and the political union and was quite prominent in the student body. Bush spent most of his boozing and snorting.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/06/07/yale_grades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_student/?page=2

[LittleClarkie]

8. Yep. He was extra curricular boy

And I think their lives since have made plain who the smarter of the two is, or at least the more intellectually curious.

[johnaries]

14. Didn't Kerry's grades suffer because he was obsessed with

skydiving or something?

I remember something about that. I definitely remember Bush was a partying cheerleader. Hmmm, don't most RW assholes consider male cheerleaders to be "fags"?

[Lisa]

16. I think he was getting his pilot's license? n/t

[opihimoimoi]

4. Bush cheated...Kerry earned his...even if poor, he earned those grades..

[Rex]

5. They say the same shit every 15 minutes. Yawn.

I had no idea the RW media was that pathetic and obvious.

[niyad]

7. according to the boston globe, grades about equal

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/06/07/yale_grades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_student/

personally, I fail to see how that prancing poseur soiling the oval office could have even passed the courses listed, much less done decently in them.

[terryg11]

9. surely his frat brothers were a big help

or possibly a new building on campus?

[Warren Stupidity]

10. Kerry not up for election, neither is that idiot Bush.

That election was stolen in 2004. I've got an idea, lets concentrate on this election, on getting out the vote, on making the numbers so big that fraud will have to be an obvious outrage to be effective. Get out the vote. Ignore the distractions. We can discuss this VERY IMPORTANT ISSUE november 8.

Get on the phone. Get out the vote.

[Atman]

11. We did this whole thread in 2004.

They turn out virtually equal in the end, with ups and downs for each along the way. No story here.

Iraq fell, democracy is no longer even remotely possible, and our soldiers are now officially dying as security guards for Halliburton's embassy project.

.

[eagler]

12. bush's yale transcript

http://www.iuptown.com/YaleProtest/bushs_yale_transcript.htm

[darkism]

17. BUSH took Japanese?

He can barely read and write the Roman alphabet, how did he deal with kana and kanji?

[buzzard]

13. I don't care whose grades were better as I have a very gifted son who has

demonstrated that intellect has nothing to do with test performance. This has in fact been a very contentious issue in our family because my middle son has always performed poorly at school yet is undoubtedly the most gifted intellectually. I was so worried about him that I had him tested privately and he scored in the 99.6 percentile, however this has had very little impact on his ability to well in our education system. This is an ongoing battle in our household as we know he could do better than his grades indicate.

[Lisa]

15. as a college instructor, I also look at what students do with their knowledge

I've taught a number of C students who have really impressed me. Sometimes I've met them after, at various jobs, or if they ask me for a letter of reference. And that gives me a chance to see if people got anything out of the course, and whether it changed their perspective on the world. One guy (who started out as a party animal with the grades to match) decided to take a year off and work in a developing country. Another, not a science student, was inspired to cycle to the opposite coast with a group doing public presentations about what causes global warming. I recently met a girl who was in political science, but switched to ecology and resource management after taking one of my courses -- she was interested in the topics, even though she didn't get top grades, and decided that she wanted a different career. And one guy who had served in the military said that he had a new appreciation for the things he'd come across as a UN peacekeeper, and added that "I had no idea that geography has so much about people in it -- I thought it was just about charts and maps, and this is way more interesting".

Arguably Kerry has thought more about the topics covered in his classes. Bush did get an MBA, but there were long periods when he didn't do much to apply his knowledge (like travelling, or getting active in public issues). He's had plenty of opportunities to expand his understanding, but it seems he just hasn't been interested or motivated enough (and one would think that has ample resources for that). He doesn't seem to want to learn about other countries or about science and technology -- he gets muddled when he tries to talk about these sorts of things.

Some of my own profs have told me that the grading scale was much tougher when Kerry and Bush (and Gore, too) went to college ... basically they would be equivalent to B+ students (even getting some A grades), at many schools today. Someone earlier in the thread pointed out that it's not unusual for students to start out with low grades in the mandatory courses, and improve later on as Kerry did (happened to me and my officemates as well). So it makes sense to look at what they did in their 3rd and 4th years, rather than an overall average as some reports have.

Anyway, if these guys were past students, I wouldn't have any hesitation in writing letters for Kerry and Gore (even if they didn't do that well in my classes), considering their ongoing involvement with the course material. As for Bush ... this semester I dealt with a guy who didn't do too badly in a course I'd taught last year, only I suspected that he'd gotten a lot of help from his work group. That on its own wouldn't have been a bad thing, but he wasn't able to talk about several of the key topics which we'd covered, and at one point pressed me to exaggerate his qualifications for grad school. Ironically, academic dishonesty was one of those topics! I get a similar vibe from Bush, when I read his remarks.


http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/06/07/yale_grades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_student/

[Porcupine]

18. Has Bush EVER demonstrated knowledge of history?

It's very clear that Bush was a History major but he seems totally ignorant about the history of both Europe and the America's. How could that be?

Actually I know a classmate of *'s who is very clear in stating that Georgie was a drunk who rarely showed up at classes. This person went on to serve the US Army in Vietnam while Bush was a drunk in Texas.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

19. Has It Ever Occurred To Folks That Bu$h Is A Purposeful Idiot?

It makes him more palatable to "base" Republicans...

[WinkyDink]

20. The book "Dumbass" will lay any doubt to rest as to CURRENT

intelligence.