What contemporaneous records exist about Donald Trump’s grades and honors at Wharton in 1968?
Executive summary
Contemporaneous public records from the University of Pennsylvania — chiefly the 1968 commencement program and the Wharton Dean’s List published in the student newspaper — show Donald J. Trump graduated from Wharton in 1968 with a Bachelor of Science in Economics but do not list him among honor graduates or Dean’s List recipients, and no official transcript has been publicly released due to student-record privacy rules and the school's adherence to them [1] [2] [3]. Eyewitness accounts from classmates and professors collected over decades reinforce that he was not a standout academic at Wharton, while some contemporary media profiles from the 1970s repeated claims that conflict with the contemporaneous Penn records [4] [5] [6].
1. The clearest contemporaneous document: the 1968 commencement program
The physical 1968 commencement program held in the Penn Archives lists Wharton graduates and enumerates award, prize and Latin-honors recipients for the Class of 1968, and Donald Trump’s name does appear among the graduates but not among the lists of cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude, or named prize winners — an omission reporters and archive-checkers have treated as direct contemporaneous evidence that he graduated without academic distinction [1] [2] [3].
2. The Dean’s List and student newspaper as contemporaneous checks
The Daily Pennsylvanian — Wharton’s student newspaper — published the Dean’s List in 1968 and Trump’s name is not among the roughly 56 students listed, a contemporaneous campus record journalists cite to argue he was not among the top performers that year [2] [4]. Multiple outlets have pointed to that omission as proof by absence given that such lists were routinely printed and public on campus at the time [6] [3].
3. Classmate and professor recollections recorded over time
Several classmates and long-serving faculty later told reporters that Trump did not stand out academically; a longtime Wharton professor’s alleged repeated comment that “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had” is widely reported in retrospective interviews and memoirs, and classmates interviewed by campus and national outlets generally do not recall him as a top student — these are contemporaneous in the sense of being direct memories of the 1966–68 period but were recorded years later [5] [4] [7].
4. Contradictory contemporary media claims and later ambiguity
Some earlier media profiles, including a 1973 New York Times profile cited in later fact checks, contained assertions such as Trump graduating “first in his class,” which conflict with the Penn commencement program and Dean’s List; these inconsistencies highlight that contemporaneous public reporting did not uniformly reflect the campus records and that later biographical claims have sometimes amplified or misstated earlier facts [6].
5. The transcript issue and limits of public records
Colleges are legally barred from releasing student transcripts except to the student or with authorization, so the definitive contemporaneous document — Trump’s official transcript showing semester-by-semester grades and honors decisions — has not been publicly released, and Penn has not provided it; during the 2016 campaign the candidate’s representatives reportedly discouraged release and threatened legal action, limiting public access to that primary contemporaneous record [6] [3] [8].
6. Leaks, secondary documents, and remaining gaps
A junior-year transcript fragment and unverifiable online postings have circulated but do not substitute for the senior-year transcript or formal honors certification, leaving a residual gap that contemporaneous published campus records largely fill but do not close absolutely; reporting notes this absence and treats the commencement program and Dean’s List as the best available contemporaneous public evidence [9] [2] [8].
Conclusion: what contemporaneous records show and what they don’t
Contemporaneous, verifiable Penn records — the 1968 commencement program and the Dean’s List in the student newspaper — show Trump graduated from Wharton in 1968 but were not consistent with claims that he graduated with honors or at the top of his class; direct contemporaneous grade-by-grade transcripts remain private and have not been released publicly, leaving the archival program and published lists as the primary contemporaneous documentary basis for assessing his honors status [1] [2] [3].