Nevertheless, he entered HLS from Columbia with only a 3.3. I had to have a 4.0 at a time when a 4.0 meant valedictorian or salutatorian. I was the former. He made the Law Review not on grades but by write-on with AA points added on as well. He was voted in as Editor NOT by grades, which is how it was done when I attended. And he was viewed as a very weak Editor. He did not even go on to clerk. Judges know who is write-on HLS law review and who is not. He made magna because Harvard had shifted from blind grading to open grading so he got brownie points in class for being AA. It once meant something to be on HLS law review by grades and to make editor that way. It now means very little. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/06/us/first-black-elected-to-head-harvard-s-law-review.html  | 
							
						
 Where in that article is is cited that he had a 3.3 GPA?  | 
						You'll never get rid of affirmative action. I worked in admissions for a year before grad school and we had no affirmative action...yet somehow they filled a summer program up with bottom percentile kids every year...all of them minority.    
And you'll never get rid of legacy, just like you'll never get rid of frats/srats...rich will always signal their parents went there. Further, so many legacies are back-doored in via bullsh*t sports they're not even good at.  | 
							
						
 But it is complete luck of the draw what parents a child is born to. A child has no say in the amount of interest a family shows in education. A child can't help it if he is born to parents who don't understand the value of education. Why shouldn't schools give a hand up to bright kids whose families didn't send them to extra classes, seminars, tutoring sessions? When two kids are equally bright, but one had to work twice as hard to get half as far as the kid born to an academically inclined family, maybe it's a good thing for a college to take their circumstances into account.  | 
						
 One year before grad school? So you were 22 and you think they told you everything?  | 
| Why is nobody talking about POTUS and his children going to Wharton Undergrad? Do you think they all have smarts in spite of self proclamation from the one and only of being "stable genius" (whatever that means)? As long as ivies continue to admit such people I have no problem if they admit URMs on Affirmative Action. | 
							
						
 So, what are you doing on here rather than running the free world? I mean, you are a person of greater "merit." What happened to you? Why didn't you amount to anything or anyone?  | 
| 
						Nah obama is smart...so is michele.
 Malia on the other hand....LOL. Chelsea was a stanford level talent (though probably wouldn't have gotten in unhooked). Malia isn't Harvard ability in any sense (other than the ability to hook up with british posh guys).  | 
| lol @ schools forsaking legacy admits and the constant stream of cash money that brings them. | 
						
 This.  | 
							
						
 Obama is intelligent - intelligent enough to game the system and leverage himself upwards by taking advantage of being a reasonably articulate and popular black guy. A white person with the same intelligence would still be a community organizer in Chicago, living off his lawyer wife. The one thing the presidential examples all have in common, whether Bush II or Obama or Trump, is taking advantage of the cards that were dealt to them. I don't judge any of them for gaming the system that is called life.  | 
						
 Take off the blinders - if Trump hasn't demonstrated genius over the course of his life no one has. Unconventional, but genius nonetheless.  | 
							
						
 Is that the meaning of genius in Trumpster dictionary? Until recently Trump has been saying Russia did not interfere in our elections. Now, all of a sudden he must have realized GOP will lose bigly in the upcoming midterms, so to insulate himself from getting blamed, he started saying Russia is helping democrats! Did he not say he just concluded a very successful summit with Putin in Helsinki? If he is the definition of genius human race is plumbing new depths of IQ far below idiot level.  | 
| The worst cases aren't even actual legacies. They're admits like Jared Kushner whose parents didn't go to a school like Harvard but will buy their children's way in. | 
							
						
 Obama graduated from Columbia in 1983 with a degree in political science. At Columbia in 1983, you needed a GPA of 3.3 or higher to with honors. He did not graduate with honors, which means his GPA was between a 2.0 and a 3.3. More astonishing is that you did not know this, but then again you live no doubt in a progressive bubble free from the interference of fair and balanced reporting. That said, I have no doubt that he his very intelligent, plus he has the charisma etc required of a leader. That's not the point of this discussion. The point here is that without the preferences being discussed above, he never would have gotten into the schools he graduated from.  |