Fast facts about the college experiences of 10 United States presidents
There's been a lot of talk this election about where Barack Obama went to college (Columbia University and Harvard Law School). If he becomes the 44th president, he won't be the first to hail from the Ivy Leagues and likely not the last. But, if Sarah Palin becomes the next Vice President, she will be the first to fund part of her college education with a beauty pageant scholarship. Whoever moves into the White House come January will join a long line of presidents with quirky educational backgrounds. Here's our Top 10:
10) Ronald Reagan was student body president at Eureka College in Illinois.
9) George W. Bush is the only U.S. president with an MBA (from Harvard). John F. Kennedy attended Stanford Business School, but didn't graduate.
8) Bill Clinton is the only U.S. president who was a Rhodes Scholar.
7) Thomas Jefferson was only 16 when he attended the College of William and Mary. He also founded the University of Virginia on land purchased by another U.S. president, James Monroe.
6) Woodrow Wilson is the only President with a PhD (in political science from John Hopkins University.) He also served as president of Princeton University.
5) Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman never even went to college.
4) Franklin Delano Roosevelt was blackballed by Porcellian, the most exclusive social club at Harvard. (An applicant was blackballed when a Porcellian member put a black ball in the voting box. It took only one black ball to get shut out.)
3) William Henry Harrison's dad pulled him out of Hampden-Sydney College because he was cavorting with anti-slavery Methodists and Quakers. He also was the only U.S. president to go to medical school, but he didn't graduate.
2) Teddy Roosevelt was considered odd and eccentric by his classmates at Harvard and kept a zoo in his room that had lobsters, snakes and a huge turtle in it.
1) Millard Fillmore never went to college, but attended a one-room schoolhouse in upstate New York and married his schoolteacher, a redhead named Abigail Powers.
Do you think it matters where a U.S. president went to college?