Which Bush are you talking about? I don’t know too much about Gore’s school days (article at washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dy … -2000Mar18 gives some background indicating Gore had good IQ and SAT scores but bad grades), but Clinton was pretty much a standout no matter what yardstick you use, even if he “only” studied law at Yale and thus had no Harvard grades.
Coming from a single-parent home (father dead in a car accident 3 months before he was born), by age 16 you’ve got Clinton’s shaking JFK’s hand as part of the Boys Nation delegation of kids selected from all over the country. By being a band geek and through studying hard, he pulled together the scholarship money to go to Georgetown – money that his family otherwise would not have had. (Their foreign service program, which he graduated from, was and probably still is tops in the U.S.) By the time he graduated from Georgetown, he’d earned a Rhodes Scholar spot in Oxford.
Following Oxford, he then did the Yale Law School thing, but it would be hard to say that Bush did “better” in any way. I don’t have the full history of Yale law school’s vague grading system (“honors” and “passes” given, no grades at all during the first semester, no class rankings, etc.), but so far it would appear that the only valid part of your sentence is that Bush “scored better” at Harvard than Clinton did – now WHAT Bush was scoring (dope, chicks, etc.) can remain a debate point for future presidential biographers. However, I somehow doubt Yale law school’s grading system is any kind of a black mark against Clinton – Yale continues to be ranked higher than Harvard’s law school in many rankings. In contrast to Bush and Gore, Clinton further stands out as a guy who got into top universities on his own legs.[/quote]
George Bush’s Verbal SAT score was 566, and his Maths SAT score was 640 - a total of only 1206, and got into Yale (legacy). Using these SAT scores, Bush’s IQ would be somewhere between 124 and 137.
Al Gore scored a total SAT of 1355, but his grades at Harvard were worse than Bush’s grades at Yale.
John Kerry will not release his scores, presumably because Bush’s were higher. One report states that Kerry had 1190, and got into Harvard. However, both Kerry and Bush took the Navy Officer Qualification Test when they were in the Navy, and Bush scored 125, Kerry 120.
Bill Clinton, the genius, got 1032 on his SATs.
I was able to find some rather interesting SAT scores:
Bill O’Reilly - 1585
James Woods - 1579
Ben Stein - 1573
Rush Limbaugh - 1530
Al Gore - 1355
George W. Bush - 1206
John Kerry - 1190
Bill Clinton - 1032
Al Franken - 1020
Janeane Garofalo - 950
Howard Stern - 870
gore had worse grades at harvard than bush at yale. he flunked out of divinity school and then dropped out of law school after earning some pretty pathetic grades. how do you flunk out of divinity school? he got 5 f’s out of 8 grades. that’s just really really sad.
i would not quibble with clinton’s academic record. yale law has probably the most selective admissions criteria of any school anywhere in the world. and though the rhodes involves a lot of politics and ass-kissing, it’s still an impressive indicator of academic prowess.
[quote=“Chewycorns”]
I was able to find some rather interesting SAT scores:
Bill O’Reilly - 1585
James Woods - 1579
Ben Stein - 1573
Rush Limbaugh - 1530
Al Gore - 1355
George W. Bush - 1206
John Kerry - 1190
Bill Clinton - 1032
Al Franken - 1020
Janeane Garofalo - 950
Howard Stern - 870[/quote]
Link please. Smells like an internet hoax.
OK, I did a little googling myself and all I could find is stories about “unverified” and “self-reported” scores. :liar:
I refuse to believe any of those scores without verification.
[quote=“Flipper”]gore had worse grades at harvard than Bush at yale. he flunked out of divinity school and then dropped out of law school after earning some pretty pathetic grades. how do you flunk out of divinity school? he got 5 f’s out of 8 grades. that’s just really really sad.
I would not quibble with Clinton’s academic record. yale law has probably the most selective admissions criteria of any school anywhere in the world. and though the rhodes involves a lot of politics and ass-kissing, it’s still an impressive indicator of academic prowess.[/quote]
Impeached ex-President Bill Clinton* also was asked to leave the Rhodes program. His poor academic performance in the program course work combined with his extended abscences were sufficient for the program directors to request his departure. This part is usually not mentioned by his accolytes. Go figure.
No it is isn’t. That article says those scores are self-reported. That is, the people can say whatever they want and apparently you will believe them. Given Rush Limbaugh’s propensity for distorting the truth, one would be a fool to believe his claim that he scored 1530 on the SATs.
The other scores are equally suspect not only because such scores are not made public so they can only be self-reported, but we don’t even have any evidence that those people actually reported those scores. For example, I don’t believe Clinton scored only a 1032. He obviously would’ve scored higher than that and if he had scored so poorly do you really believe he would’ve publicly admitted it? If you can find a source where he admits to having scored a 1032 then I’ll accept all of the scores. Otherwise, it’s just one person’s statement about what a bunch of other people allegedly stated about the size of their penis. . . oops, I mean their scores on the SATs.
[quote=“fred smith”]Er, that is what I meant to say was see it was like this and you know actually what happened was, and you are never going to believe this, but…
[/quote]
That’s ok Fred, don’t worry about it. I’m sure you were just distracted by my rosary beads.
[quote=“Flipper”][quote=“Mucha (Muzha) (Muzha) Man”]
Does anyone else see a problem with anecdotes like the above? Well, here’s what I see is wrong with it:
America, as we have seen in recent elections is almost evenly divided between Republican and democratic party supporters. This should translate into half the student body supporting each party. half of any given class then should be composed of republican supporters. See what I’m getting at? [/quote]
huh? the halls of ivy league schools are full of kids from rich liberal households(mainly from new England). you’re just making numbers up now.
[quote]
The above story is pure right wing paranoia and an egregious claim to victim status from a group that one, is hardly marginalized, and two, is all too contemptuous of the very notion of victimhood.[/quote]
at most major us universities, 80-90% of the faculty are liberals. at ivy league universities, most of the students are liberal.
I’m not sure why you would choose to challenge something so obvious.
yes, we all know that prestigious degrees make someone smart. Bush has a better academic resume than either gore or Kerry. imagine that. [/quote]
Vichy Chewie’s posted article seems to argue my point better than his, but oh well.
I suggested a half-half split in the student body and never made any comment on the professorate.
But let’s narrow our topic to just Ivy League schools. I have been searching for some evidence that they are in fact attended more heavily by liberals, but can not find anything conclusive. The Yale Review’s informal survey suggested that the conservative-liberal percentage split was around 23-34 with the majority refusing to say what they were.
Several articles I read also suggested that the number of openly conservative students was growing while the number of radical left-wingers was decreasing. So can someone please come up with some hard evidence that the student bodies of Ivy League colleges are overwhelmingly liberal?
No one has ever asked me for an opinion on Forumosa. On the other hand I have asked the so-called conservatives on Forumosa many many times to come out against the idiots of the right, but to no avail until this thread.
interesting article on some faculty ratios according to political affiliation[/quote]
So he takes these figures and then uses them to argue that
i) Academics don’t accept that other points of view exist and should be taught and explored (but offers no evidence)
ii) Says you need to be mentored and that this is only possible if you agree with your mentor politically (again no evidence. Indeed I believe most good student/mentor relationships contain a good degree of conflict)
iii) that it is very, very hard to get a tenured faculty position at a university. (but this applies to all applicants, left and right, and he provides no solid evidence that politics comes into it)
I can only say that with such shit argument building and critical thinking skills, I hope Bruce Bartlett never gets into any serious teaching job anywhere.
Ah but here you have the same argument that was used on the Left for 40 years Butcher Boy. Here, you have a “club” of liberals who may not even realize that they are discriminating against others but who share common “values” and “ideals” and to achieve the aims of increased “diversity,” we must engage in a certain amount of “social engineering” to achieve a more “balanced” and “equal” society in academia. Ergo, we need to have affirmative action to ensure that Republicans hold 51.8 percent of all academic positions. If they do not hold those numbers, then clearly discrimination and prejudice are to blame right? RIGHT? I mean if 51.8 percent of Americans voted for Bush why is this not showing up in academic circles. If professors were to be represented at the same rate that they show up in normal society, why then are we seeing only 8 percent to 12 percent of faculty claiming to be conservative?
Why are members of the Sierra Club, ACLU, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, NAACP, supporters of public radio and the NEA disproproportionately made up of Democrats? Because Democrats tend to be drawn to those organizations more than Republicans.
On the other hand, I would bet that members of the NRA, the “Moral Majority,” People for the American Way, the Ku Klux Klan, and supporters of monster truck rallies and the war in Iraq are disproportionately made up of Republicans.
Perhaps Republicans tend not to pursue higher education or careers in teaching as much as Democrats do. Do you have any concrete evidence that universities actually discriminate against Republicans in their admissions standards or hiring practices? If not, then your rant is nothing more than another unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, that is, unless you are advocating for affirmative action or quotas for Republicans in higher education. Is that what you want?
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