What is Trump's real record at Wharton?

Donald Trump

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Shortly after Donald Trump questioned President Barack Obama's legitimacy as a U.S. citizen, he challenged his academic record.

"I heard [Obama] was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" Trump said in an April 2011 interview with The Associated Press. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."

During the February 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump said, "The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don't know who he is. It's crazy."

Pulitizer Prize-winning website Politifact rated Trump's statement as a "pants on fire" lie.

All queries and the Politifact report show Obama's time at those Ivy League schools was well documented and represented honestly.

Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983 with a degree in political science and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1991. He was also the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

University of Pennsylvania records and documents uncovered by the school's student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, show it's President Trump's academic record that is now in question.

For decades, the national media has reported that Trump graduated "first in his class" at Wharton, often confusing his undergraduate degree with the Ivy League university's top-ranked MBA program.

In 1973 and 1976, the New York Times reported that Trump graduated first in his class in 1968 from the Wharton School of Finance.

During campaign stops in Pennsylvania, Trump frequently said he was "a very smart guy" and knew the state well because he went to Wharton.

When PennLive tried to delve into his academic record in the summer, a school spokesman said it's university policy to not release such information other than confirming graduation.

In Gwenda Blair's 2001 book, "The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President," she said Trump transferred into Wharton from Fordham University with help from family connections. The president's older brother, Freddy Trump, knew an admissions counselor at Wharton, she said.

That book and some reports in the 1980s claimed Trump didn't graduate first in his class and didn't graduate with honors.

A 1968 commencement program shared Friday by the Daily Pennsylvanian backs that up. It shows that Trump graduated from the undergraduate school of finance and commerce, but he did not graduate at the top of his class or with honors.

The Daily Pennsylvanian also interviewed alumni from Trump's graduating class. Some remembered him as professional, focused and "different from the rest of his class."

Others suggested he was always more interested in real estate in New York than his time at Penn.

Trump's media team has not responded to questions from PennLive about his time at Wharton since April.

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