Rick Perry Wasn't the Best Student in College

Getty
Erik Hayden 4,429 Views Aug 5, 2011

Rick Perry doesn't like to be compared to George Bush, but he now has another thing in common: he got pretty bad grades in college. Courtesy of a source who passed along the college transcripts of his Texas A&M years to The Huffington Post, we learned that Perry "rarely earned anything above a C in his courses -- earning a C in U.S. History, a D in Shakespeare, and a D in the principles of economics." We won't fault him for it, but one of his worst courses appears to be a semester of Organic Chemistry, where he got an F. Even accounting for the decades of grade inflation since Perry graduated in 1972, those are pretty below average grades.

But, again like Bush, Perry was up to other things in college. A few days ago the Texas Tribune published detailed look into his A&M life as, in part, a college prankster: he put live chickens in the room of an upperclassman over Christmas break and executed another prank that "involved M-80 firecrackers and an acquired knowledge of the plumbing in A&M buildings." HuffPost notes that the only two A's Perry received were in classes for "world military systems" and "Improv. of Learning." 

Rick Perry's Texas A&M Transcript

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at ehayden at nationaljournal dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.

Sources

Related Articles   More by Erik Hayden

Texas's Rick Perry Is 'Gonna Think About' a 2012 Run

While Cain Still Leads In New Poll, Signs of a Gingrich Surge

Rick Perry Is Mighty Proud of His Inflammatory Rhetoric

 

Remote, Polluted Lakes; Comet Crossbow

Jon Stewart Pleads with the GOP Not to Back Newt Gingrich

Elsewhere on the Web

User Comments

Please type your comment and click Post. If you’re not already logged in you will be prompted to log in or register

  • The Atlantic Wire on Twitter
  • The Atlantic Wire RSS Feed
  • The Atlantic Wire iPhone App