What grades did Donald Trump receive at Wharton University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s?
Executive summary
Donald J. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree, but public records tied to that commencement do not show him graduating with honors and there is no publicly available transcript documenting his course-by-course grades [1] [2]. Colleges cannot release student transcripts without the student’s consent, and reporting indicates Trump has never made his Wharton transcript public and reportedly discouraged the university from doing so [3] [4].
1. What the official commencement record shows
The 212th Commencement program from 1968 lists Donald Trump as a Wharton graduate but does not list him among students graduating with Latin honors (cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude) or on the published Dean’s List for that year, which is strong documentary evidence that he did not graduate with academic distinction in 1968 [2] [3].
2. Why precise grade details are not public
Federal privacy protections and university policy prevent colleges from releasing student transcripts to third parties without the student’s consent, and multiple outlets report that Trump has not released his academic transcript from Wharton; Fortune and PhillyMag note that Trump has consistently declined to show school records, leaving grade-level specifics unobtainable to journalists and the public [4] [3].
3. What classmates and faculty recalled about his classroom performance
Contemporaneous reporting and later interviews with Wharton peers and former faculty paint a picture of a student who did not stand out academically: the student newspaper and classmates say he was not on the Dean’s List and recollections characterize him as average or uninterested in coursework, with a longtime professor later quoted as calling him a poor student in colorful terms [2] [5] [6].
4. Claims by Trump and the conflicting narrative
Donald Trump has repeatedly invoked Wharton to bolster claims of academic exceptionalism, including assertions by him and some profiles over the years that he graduated at the top of his class; those claims clash with the commencement evidence and the absence of a transcript, producing the core discrepancy in the public record [4] [3].
5. Context on admissions and why classmates’ memories matter
Reporting by Newsweek, Poets & Quants and other outlets places Trump’s transfer to Wharton in the context of higher acceptance rates in the 1960s and notes that family connections may have helped his admission, while multiple classmates and the student press emphasize he did not appear among high-performing students—context that helps explain why the absence of honors is notable even if it does not translate to specific GPA numbers [7] [6] [2].
6. What can and cannot be concluded from available reporting
Available, credible public sources allow two firm conclusions: Trump graduated from Wharton in 1968 and did not appear on Wharton’s published honors lists or the Dean’s List that year [1] [2]. What cannot be determined from those sources is his exact GPA or the letter grades in individual courses—those specifics require an official transcript that has not been released and is protected by student-privacy law [3] [4].
7. Alternative perspectives and implicit incentives
Supporters point to Wharton attendance and a bachelor’s degree as evidence of elite education while critics highlight the missing transcript and contemporaneous omissions from honors lists to argue that public claims of top-of-class standing are exaggerated; reporting also suggests implicit incentives—self-promotion and political advantage—for portraying academic performance as better than the documented public record supports, and incentives for withholding transcripts to avoid scrutiny [4] [3] [1].